Dog of the Military
by DuHSPaZZiNGFeL
Summary: A war with Drachma, a secretive plot behind the ice, and the disappearance of innocent citizens. Set after the end of the manga, Ed is called for duty in the front lines. The problem is, can he survive? Al isn't so sure and the Truth is part of his plan.
1. The Game of War

**WARNING****: Contains spoilers for the final chapter in the manga. (108 Journey's End) If you are following **_**Brotherhood **_**dubbed or have not yet caught up to the chapter, you have been notified.**

**Disclaimer: I obviously do not own **_**Fullmetal Alchemist**_**. This is called fanfiction. Note the FAN.**

**I'd also like to thank my beta, **_**receneck**_**, for putting up with my really slow writing skills. Without this person, I wouldn't now know that you're supposed to say "blond" for a guy and "blonde" when it refers to a girl. I did not know that! (And really awesome to know. Heck yes!)**

**This will be a weekly updated story, but towards the last few chapters, I may post them more quickly. Many chapters ahead are already completed, but this is to give leeway to me and my beta. It is a multi-chapter story with about 10 chapters in all.**

**Please enjoy the story.  
**

**Dog of the Military**

**Chapter One: **

**The Game of War**

There were _always_ strings attached, and he could do nothing about it. This was the ultimate burden of the silver State Alchemist's pocket watch that he gripped firmly in his hand. And, ultimately, this was the nature of things; to change at will and to be changed when willed not.

Edward was only seventeen, just one year underage, but he was already a fairly high rank in the army. In fact, he had already automatically gained the rank of Major at the age of twelve. But, it was his sacrifice for his brother's body on the fabled Promised Day that cost him his ability to perform alchemy. However, it was then that he realized that this life was what made him who he was; he was no stranger to it, and neither was his younger sibling. His brother, Alphonse, was at least glad that Ed was able to retrieve his right arm back and now only wore automail, or an artificial limb, on his left leg.

He retained the name of the Fullmetal Alchemist, having been too infamous in the military to drop the second title. It was well-known enough within the state's walls that he could no longer perform alchemy, but it was just simply that fact. The eldest Elric may have no alchemic ability, but he certainly kept the knowledge and beyond even that, and what a vast source that was indeed.

Of course, his brother and him had made the decision to explore to the East and West in order to discover a way to restore those who were trapped in the form of chimeras, or half-human, half-animal, as a few of their friends were, and also in the memory of one of their largest regrets, not being able to help the little girl called Nina from such a fate. These duties were put on hold, however, as Ed still was technically a member of the military and occasionally came to visit for small reports. Al, having taken to this fact, came home as well and was now currently in Resembool, a country town in the east that just so happened to serve as the Elrics' childhood home. The older brother took to spending some time in the country's capital, Central.

"Colonel Elric, sir!" A low-ranking officer stood straight and tall before him, his right hand posed in salute. "A telegram from Fuhrer Roy Mustang."

Ed nodded at the man to be at ease and took the piece of paper from him as calmly as he could muster. His amber-gold eyes scanned the sheet for a moment and his eyebrows quickly furrowed in confusion until they subsequently disappeared into the bright blond of his choppy bangs that framed his face and hair that was tied into a braid. He closed his eyelids, obviously frustrated and pinched his nose bridge before shaking his head, stomping furiously down the Central Headquarters' hallways, and leaving a befuddled soldier in his wake.

Barging unceremoniously into the Fuhrer's office, his automail leg kicked down the door as clusters of flying wooden splinters went buzzing past and a rather large hole was now left as the damage done. "What the hell, Mustang?" Ed held up the crumpled telegram angrily in a hand that was gloved white. "You couldn't tell me face-to-face? You bastard!"

"And what's the problem, Fullmetal?" The leader of the country seemed a little too eerily somber for what was on the telegram that he had sent to his currently yelling subordinate.

"Don't give me that crap! I want you tell me what the hell is going on here!" Edward walked so quickly up to the adult man's desk that a witness could have sworn that the teen left behind a track of dents in the floorboards. When he had finally reached the frontal view of Roy Mustang, Ed held up the message blatantly in the face of an apathetic onyx gaze.

Roy almost smirked, but instead took a risk and curiously glanced over the paper as if it were nothing at all. "It's nothing important Fullmetal, just—" He was abruptly cut off by an arm that slammed hard against the top of a pile of unorganized papers and as some of them fluttered in response, the Elric brother continued for him, "—_just _an invitation to a warzone, Fuhrer Bastard!"

"This is a draft, isn't it?" Ed snarled with disgust, pointing a finger at the man before him. "_You're _ordering a draft for that Drachman dispute, aren't you? What the hell is that about? Just a week ago, the newspapers said it was resolved!" In reply, Mustang simply snatched the note from his grasp and sure enough, the notion was correct.

The memo read:

**TELEGRAM  
Central Command**

_Urgent STOP All State Alchemists to be called for duty STOP  
A military call to all those available STOP War is imminent STOP  
Martial personnel needed STOP  
Fuhrer Roy Mustang is awaiting response STOP  
Spread request to all those who are fit for the role STOP_

The Flame Alchemist looked upward and shrugged, clearly attempting to send the faux impression that he had not meant the predicament to become anymore than it needed to be. It was evident that his calm façade was fading albeit just barely. Of course, the man had known quite enough on this subject. Who did Edward think he was anyway? His title _did _include Fuhrer, and the last time he checked, that was basically the top man of the country of Amestris. He had to know these things, even if they had to be kept a secret for a while.

Mustang sighed, rubbing his eyelids with two fingers. "Fine," he said as he finally gave in.

"Fine, _what_?" Ed retorted in a fierce manner, his gold irises flashing dangerously. The lighting from the daylight sun that reflected off the window made it ever more difficult to stare at him with a straight face. His lips twisted into something that would frighten even the toughest growling lion, and his anger seemed to emanate from every corner of the room.

"_Fine, _I'll tell you why this is going on," said Mustang. "It's obvious you want to know, and you will find out anyway. You're too disobedient and short to keep anything from, Ed." He felt a smirk grace his features for a small space of time and let it slip away, unashamedly ignoring the shout of "Who are you calling so small that krill can ask a whale to eat him?" Although Ed wasn't so short anymore, Roy noted. The kid was only a few inches from his own height, as opposed to when he was barely at shoulder height not too long ago, and he hadn't quite stopped growing yet.

The blonde raised his eyebrows, standing a ways back and crossing his arms. "I'm waiting," he replied in an uncanny undertone.

"Look," Mustang alleged, quickly glimpsing at the door, "I'll have to tell you in a more _mundane _method_._" It was a hint, and Ed was clever enough to pick it up. If Mustang couldn't tell him here, it was only apparent that the situation of the problem between Briggs and Drachma was more of a problem than it already was. The Fuhrer continued on, unfazed. "I think it's time we played chess, Ed. I don't believe I have ever played you."

They had agreed that their unconventional game of chess would take place later in the afternoon the next day, as it was to be the start of a well anticipated weekend and Roy and Ed would be less busy than per usual. With that said and done, Ed decided that it would be best to try the training grounds for an hour or so. If he was going off to a war, which he was becoming surer of now, he might as well refine some of his combat skills. And even though it had been nearly two years since he had lost his alchemy, there were still some things he had to train himself in.

It was no surprise when he heard whispers around him as he entered the pitch. He had gotten used to that when he was younger, but he supposed that the soldiers here were just as shocked to see him walking onto the training field as he was. He hadn't gone on in a long time, not since back then.

He heard murmurs of "Look! It's _him_!" and "Is that the Fullmetal?" as he passed. Ed had clung to his name for sure, but if he could help it, he would have lost the second title altogether when he had fulfilled what he had sought out for. It seemed that life simply consisted of complications, especially in a life like the one he lived.

Shrugging, Edward pretended his ears simply heard nothing as he brusquely started to strike and kick an eight-foot tall punching bag filled with water. The biceps of his arms began to throb and burn with intensity as the jabs became swifter and more complex. His right leg heated up and he felt the artificial limb of steel that was his left leg creak ever so slightly. Beads of sweat dribbled down his chin.

Sure enough, almost forty-five minutes had gone past in silence with only the sounds of grunts and fists pounding onto fibers breaking the tone. But, Ed knew that the good luck of absolutely no interruptions was too good to be true.

A tall, extremely burly man came sauntering confidently down toward him, bright blue eyes, pale skin, and a light blonde mustache with a single hair sticking up in a curl from the middle of the top of his forehead, was the most unwelcome visitor Edward could have ever hoped for.

"Edward Elric!" bellowed an utterly too happy Major Alex Louis Armstrong. "You are quite well today, as any fair man can see!"

Ed groaned. This clearly was not his ideal start to a sunny afternoon. His muscles were beginning to ache, and he was not so sure he could take a nice, _long _chat with an overly emotional Armstrong. The man was just excessively insane for his own good, but somehow, even as much as everyone made an attempt to nudge the Strong Arm Alchemist in the right direction, he never took the hint.

The younger alchemist sighed, honestly not up to being tortured in a slow and painful manner, considering how unbelievably annoying it was. "Oh it's you," Edward said plainly, dropping his arms to his sides. "Major—er—why are you here?" It was easy for anyone to notice that the blonde had absolutely no intention of staying there too long. His legs were twitching in a desperate urge to move away as fast as humanly possible.

Armstong laughed, albeit an obnoxious and loud one, and grinned broadly under his mustache, pounding his unwilling companion hard on the back. His azure eyes twinkling and strange, but surely fake or imagined purple-orange sparkles flickering somewhere above his shoulders, he said, "Why surely you will allow an old colleague to spar with you! It is only to your best interest, young Edward!"

Ed moaned at full volume as the Major went on to say, "But it is such a wonderful thing! Generations of the Armstrong line have fashioned a technique worthy of any phases and workings of battle! I shall train you with complete force, Edward Elric!"

And thus the eccentricities of a fun-loving "battle" began. But it was as much fun-loving as Ed hated every waking moment of it. He spent the next hour and a half trying to make a hit on Armstrong, but to no avail. It turned out that there were more than a few spectators, and he wasn't so sure if he enjoyed that aspect much at all. He heard gasps of amazement every time he would make some deliberate or difficult martial arts move, a twirl in the air, or narrowly avoid being punched. In the end, neither the Major nor Edward had landed a blow.

His hands on his knees, and sweat rolling down fast on his cheeks, Ed panted in a hunched position. He was definitely sure that he would be as ready as he would ever be for a war now. All he needed was some artillery practice, and that was that. He shuddered at the thought. The seventeen-year-old alchemist had refused resorting to using gunfire before, but the idea was somehow thrown back in his face, and he saw now that he had no choice. He would not survive a day on the battlefield without a gun, though he decided in his mind that he would only use it if the situation wholly called for it.

Amestris was his country and he was a soldier, a dog of the military, whether he liked it or not. He would serve it and he would protect the people he cared about. This was his job, the job that he made the choice to keep even though he was already supposed to be done with it when he successfully retrieved his brother's body.

He slumped almost all the way over, catching his breath. "Let's get out of here, Major," he said in spurts between his teeth, "I'm starving."

Armstrong could only entirely agree to this, as he seemed to call it fit that he had specifically "trained" Edward in the special techniques of his family lineage, although the younger alchemist begged to differ. The truth was, he would have rather liked training _alone _and _without _any improper intrusions from anybody, particularly the man that strutted merrily beside him.

While they walked to the shower rooms near the men's lavatory, Ed picked up more murmurs, but this time they had to do with more recent goings-on and these just so happened to spark his interest. He passed two soldiers in the bathroom in plain, dark blue uniform with gold trimmings, not unlike the one that Ed would soon change back into, he heard it.

"Did you hear?" A man with horn-rimmed glasses and black, choppy hair spoke quietly to another with prominent chestnut hair and stubble. "Sergeant Brosh went missing yesterday." Ed tried to listen in very carefully when he thought Armstrong was busy enough in another stall and washing his face clean from grime and moisture.

"Really?" It was the man without glasses that replied, clearly intrigued. "I thought Denny would never be the man to desert. The military must be on his trail. Desertion means a hearing and a death sentence. Maria Ross might follow him; I hear they're pretty close."

Ed walked discreetly into a stall and pretended to be too preoccupied with having to use it for real, but shut the door with the silvery sliding lock and sat on the shiny, white cover of the toilet bowl. He knew that this idea of eavesdropping was probably the crudest form yet, but he couldn't resist hearing the details. He had to admit that he was curious as to what could have possibly occurred to Denny Brosh. That blonde and happy-go-lucky guy was a companion of his, so he simply ignored the toilet.

He heard the voices tone a bit deeper, as if the men didn't think others would walk in on them. It was a _public bathroom_. Of course people were going to come in! But Edward threw this thought aside as he pressed his right ear against the wood of his stall.

"That's the problem," one of them said. "There's no proof that he _did_ desert." He heard another confused snort, but the same voice kept on with his explanation. "It doesn't make any sense. He was never drafted into the Drachman border dispute, but I know for sure that he wanted to be in it. I was there. I heard him telling Hawkeye."

A shift sounded as if someone was moving their weight from one foot to the other. "So?"

"He just _went missing_. They're going to post it on the newspapers tomorrow morning." The soldier speaking lowered his voice further, so Ed had to strain to catch even a scrap of what he had said. "The Fuhrer doesn't have the evidence that he's a runaway. They can't do anything about it."

"So what do you think they're going to do?"

Ed heard a sigh and then a whisper. "Either look for him, or kill him."

When he heard the men leave, the subsequent bounding footfalls of the muscularly built Major Armstrong had also set in, and soon after, the blond found himself washing his hands in the porcelain of a sink and turning the knobs, listening to them squeak. Even though Edward was now technically the Strong Arm's superior officer, both of them were never really so formal with each other, with the exception of how they referred to the other. And this showed dearly when the Major glanced over at the youthful teen near him.

"Edward Elric," he said in a tremor that was almost too stern to be his, "You have heard." When Ed looked up to the taller man in a questioning expression, the nearly bald military officer gave him what could be passed up as a piercing stare. "The war is not only for Drachma," Armstrong urged silently, and he slowly turned on the ball of his heel, leaving a stunned boy behind him.

There was something strange going on here, and Colonel Elric was itching to find out what.

ooo

The next day had finally come without any sign of warning. Ed's morning had begun abruptly, what with his cramped military dorm in Central and his lack of culinary skills. The sunlight was streaming in the most unwelcome of ways and right into his eyeballs, making them throb with an uncomfortable burn and, to add to that, his sorry excuse for scrambled eggs turned out a lot worse than he feared. He was barely able to keep down his breakfast, as it was more scrambled than need be, duly noted as a flat and watery expanse of yellow, but strangely vaguely tasty lumps.

The next couple of hours were taken up by the occasional stiff nod in the Central Command offices and library and the silent flips of pages. For once, Ed kept to himself, and he sieved through alchemic books for new information on anything related to chimeras or battle alchemy in general. He deduced that if he had some practice on the pitch yesterday, he might as well turn up to study anything alchemy could do in the warzone. He had to be prepared as much as possible. There were certain people that would kill him a second time if he had never returned alive.

_Crap_, Edward thought nervously, _I have to call them later._

If there was one thing he feared more than Alphonse and Winry's reactions to an Ed that never came back, it would be his little brother's and childhood friend's response to when he would have to tell them that there was going to be a war in the first place.

Ed groaned. If he was going to do it, he might as well do it now. There was still about an hour left before he was required to meet Mustang at the park and he wasn't so sure that the book's descriptions of "the wreckage through alchemic explosions caused by the rapid movement of molecules in the human body as a bomb" was quite the thing to cheer him up. He even refused to let his golden eyes wander to the black-and-white photo of a brutally mutilated heap of human body parts in a mass of what he automatically assumed was blood that was paper clipped to the edge of the page. It made him shudder.

On that note, the blond closed _Alchemy Devastations and Combat _shut, causing a few specks of dust to rise off the hard lumber of the table he sat near in the State Alchemists' library. His flesh and artificial legs shuffled as he made his way to one of the enclosed telephone booths outside.

Digging out some leftover change in cenz from his uniform pants pocket, he carefully heard the _clink _of metal on metal as the coins slid in the slots and he fastened the see-through door closed.

He picked up the phone, anxious to make an urgent call to his younger brother, Al. His hands trembled ever so slightly as he dialed the long distance number to Resembool, and he waited with bated breath for someone to answer. He was almost dreading the shout of indignation and pure worry that would soon fill his left eardrum.

A click resounded. "Um. Hello?" The voice that answered sounded sleepy and curious, a voice, Ed took note, was none other than Alphonse himself. "Who is this?"

The elder Elric brother took a deep breath in. _Here we go…_"Al? It's me."

"Oh!" The dreary echo that was his sibling's voice only seconds ago vanished into thin air. He heard a happy tone and suddenly he could hear a smile rising in that light tenor on the other line. He imagined Alphonse standing up excitedly and pressing the whole side of his face into the earpiece. "Brother! Are you coming back to Resembool? How's Central? Did you find anything out about the chimeras? How are Lieutenant Hawkeye and Mustang doing? What about everyone else? And did you see—"

He was cut off quite abruptly by Ed. "Al! Listen…" His younger brother must have caught the change in the mood and dimly quieted down as he heard but a faint sound on the other side of his ear. "Look, uh, can you get Winry over there too? It's important."

Edward heard scuffling in the background and a soft "It's brother, Winry" from the Resembool telephone. He had tried to bottle enough courage to tell them. It was better, he surmised, to tell them both at the same time. He couldn't bear having to say it more than once without his head being rammed countless times with a wrench or a good screaming match.

"Ed? You never call." This time it was Winry. On the other line, Ed managed to envision her light blonde hair swaying behind her shoulders, and an ocean-like gaze trying to figure out why her friend had bothered to call for once. He could sense the suspicion that her voice was thick with. She knew something was wrong, and he was more than aware of it. "Did you break your automail again? I swear, Ed! I'm going to destroy your _other _leg if I have to!"

"No, Winry! It's not that!" He ran his right hand through his bangs worriedly.

The Rockbell was furious and annoyed. "Oh? Then what is it? Al and I are listening."

He was going to get it for sure. As if this wasn't making him anxious enough, Winry just _had _to add in a death threat even before he said anything of relevance. His eye squinted, trying to figure out how to say this piece of information before he completely lost his nerve. "Uh," he said apprehensively, "Did you read the newspaper recently?"

He heard a snort. "Are you an idiot? This is Resembool. It's a town out in the country where we _barely get any news_. Spit it out Ed!"

"Okay! Okay! Fine!" The alchemist placed one of his arms in the air in a placating matter although the person he was talking to was miles away even if you rode a train. He picked up another aggravated grunt and realized that he would probably be better off not beating around the bush. "You heard about Drachma, right?" He tried again and only heard some sort of exhale as a reply of 'yes'. He went on, "Well of course you have. You went there…"

"Ed! Hurry up!"

His teeth almost clattered together, but he had to keep himself as calm as possible. "Well, there's going to be a war going on and I'm, um…" He sighed, unable to finish his incomplete sentence, but when he heard Winry growing angrier and angrier by the instant and a desperate Al trying to pacify her, he knew that he had to get on with it.

"I'm going to the war," Edward finally breathed out.

It was absolutely silent and still on both ends of the telephone call. Ed hadn't bothered to say a word more and stood there, glancing at the ground. Al and Winry had not spoken or made any other noise, and Ed was scared to know their reaction. Would they be livid? Resentful? Would both of the people he cared about the most hate him after this? He almost didn't want to know. But if there was one thing the he was sure of, he deserved to be despised.

"I—I see," Winry murmured. "Okay."

He had definitely not expected that reaction, and he felt slightly guilty about it, but they knew that this could happen eventually. They were aware of his dangerous job, but even so, they deserved to know where he was going and why. He pulled a thought out of his mind, hoping to ensure them both. "I'm going back to Resembool for a few days and I'll be there by tomorrow night. The draft will be going around the country, so…"

"We're going to get some news about it soon," Al said somewhere in the back as if knowing exactly what his brother was going to say.

"Yeah," Ed replied sullenly. A consideration occurred to him with full realization. "Listen." He heard his brother's silence and took that as a message that he indeed was paying attention to every single word he said. "I don't want you to take the draft."

"What? But brother, I—"

"No! I'm part of the military. I'm the State Alchemist, even if I can't use my alchemy anymore. Remember? We agreed that I would be the only one to take that job, so I have the collar around my neck! It's just me!" Edward was panting now, anger coursing through his veins. "We agreed that I would _stay _part of the military after the Promised Day so that we still have access to the State Alchemists' library! Even though Fuhrer Bastard is the leader of this country now, even that idiot can't change the laws! It's too risky!"

He exhaled, trying to calm his emotions down. "Look, Al," he continued in a softer tone of voice, "I'm sorry, but I can't let you." He heard a sniff and immediately recalled who else was there. "And Winry," Ed assured, "I'm sorry too."

And, without bothering to hear any sort of answer, he hung up the phone.

The hour had passed and finally the afternoon had arrived. After just about an hour of an agonizing wait to get there along with an extremely difficult telephone call, Ed welcomed it with open arms. Although, the situation could do without him being late for their meeting in the process.

"Late again, Fullmetal." The smirking tone of newly appointed Fuhrer-King Roy Mustang pierced the air in a deep and conniving tenor.

Ed frowned and stomped impatiently over the dewy grass of the park to the chair that was across from his superior, a square table with a chess set sitting atop it in the middle. They were underneath an oak tree in Central City's Park. Clouds flitted across the horizon of a bright cobalt sky, allowing a few pigeons here and there to be seen hovering in midair attempting to sing paeans. The best part was that they were in a part of the park that people generally avoided, only because it was near the military headquarters itself.

Cars racketed about on the cobblestone streets and all the way on the other side of the area there were the distant sounds of children laughing and barking dogs. Mustang still wore his dark blue military uniform, as did Ed. They were alone, the leader of the country himself and his subordinate, and it was the perfect place to carry out their plans.

"You're going to play the white pieces, Ed," Mustang said as if uninterested, "and I'll be the black."

So they began their game of war, battling back and forth with pawns, queens, rooks, and knights. When it was clear that Ed was gradually losing the upper hand, Mustang didn't hesitate to taunt him. ("Careful, Fullmetal. The pawns on your side are disappearing. Soon you won't have enough to stand a chance.") When the raven-haired man had said this, however, Ed noticed that when he had made his move to take out one of the white chess pieces, Mustang had discreetly tapped the black tile two times with one of his pieces before casting the discarded white one to the side.

Ed shook his head with a sneer. "I can say the same for you, bastard," he said as he defeated one of the black pawns in return.

"You know," the Flame Alchemist began, again tapping the board twice with his chess piece before continuing on in a jarringly calm quality, "the Central library might have a manual on chess. A hopeless shrimp like you might need one." Ed tried to keep his growl to himself. He knew he had to try to keep his cool. Even so, Mustang didn't seem to detect this obvious anger at the word 'shrimp'.

"It's too bad," Roy Mustang said smugly, "They seem to be all checked out."

"What do you…?" Ed did not quite understand what the other alchemist was attempting to say, but stopped speaking instantly when he saw that he still had more to share. So he prolonged the play and watched as he slid his gleaming colorless knight in an 'L' shape, efficiently performing a check on his opponent, but which was quickly expunged. The Fuhrer smiled contentedly when he saw that he had narrowly escaped with his king alive.

"It's useless, Fullemtal. Even your alchemy journal couldn't help you now." He glanced up; causing a short eye contact with his younger subordinate, shimmering gold on dark midnight, but the effect was real. "Not that alchemy could help you in this situation. Someone would just take it anyway."

Ed almost smiled, but it was easy enough to keep down the urge to do so. "You forget, Fuhrer Bastard. I don't have my alchemy anymore."

"Then you don't need to worry for now."

Soon, it was apparent that Edward would lose. Mustang had commended him for a game will played, after all, the boy had never played any sort of chess before. In an ingenious move of castling, in which Mustang's black king had not yet moved an inch and was only spaces away from his rook, the king was allowed to make one special move, suddenly shifting to a safer place on the board. This allowed the black queen to effectively check the white king.

"Shit," Ed breathed, but to no avail. By the time he had tried to move his pieces around in order to escape from the predicament, the play was already checkmated.

"You lose, Fullmetal," Roy tapped the chess board two times yet again, looking at his secondary with a meaningful gaze. "But that's only to be expected. My set was able to infiltrate yours from the _inside_."

"You know too much about chess. A bastard like you probably has nothing better to do besides this and being a pervert while harassing girls." The blond raised his eyebrows, clearly angry about his defeat, but he told himself that it was no time to argue. This was too important.

The Fuhrer shook his head as he started to bag each of the pieces individually in velvet. His hands that were usually gloved with the symbol of fire alchemy's salamander etched onto the back were bare. He did not even bother to motion to Ed to help him clean up, and the other alchemist simply sat there observing, a determined look in his eye. And with that, Mustang disagreed quite entirely with what was previously stated, "You're wrong. I actually know close to nothing about the game."

He handed over the bag that contained the white chess pieces to Ed, saying that he would rather prefer if he brought them back to the office on the following event that they met again. Somehow, the bag wouldn't fit in when they tried to close and fold the checkered board and stuff the two sets in the interior as it had created a wooden box.

"Clean them up, Ed," Mustang intended, "Those pieces are old, especially the king. I know you're too stubborn to follow orders, but the king needs safekeeping. Shine the bottom or something." Edward nodded suspiciously and began heading in the opposite direction, but Mustang stopped him for a bit, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Fullmetal, the _king_."

The Fuhrer and the Colonel looked at each other for one moment, as if a secret interaction and message were meeting with their eyes. Then they turned around, one headed for an apartment near Central Command, and the other to the lower part of the city. The information that buzzed in their heads was too classified for them to get a good night's rest. There was too much to think about and too much to protect.

ooo

As promised towards Al and Winry, Edward had bought one ticket to ride on a train to Resembool the following morning at seven o'clock. He had picked up one helping of a croissant on his way to the early train and handed over his ticket to the stationmaster for him to take a glace over. His legs carried him over to the back of the locomotive, somehow finding his way to one of the rear passenger coaches and sitting as comfortably as possible on a plush tan seat. As the train started moving, the porter snaked around each part to check over tickets once again.

"Ticket please," the auburn man said uninterestedly to Ed and he gave it to him to stamp. "Thank you, Colonel Elric." Ed took note that his name was on the perforated paper as the man walked away to the engine room.

The tracks rattled unsettlingly and the floor vibrated as buildings, trees, and hills rolled on by. He would be home soon, if only for a little while, but that didn't change the fact that Resembool was the place he could always return to. His younger brother was waiting for him, as well as Winry Rockbell and her Granny Pinako. In a sense, he was more than glad to be riding back to the place where he grew up, but a strange sensation of foreboding had begun to overcome him since last afternoon.

"What did that bastard say again?" he murmured to himself. He almost felt like smacking his forehead when he recalled."Right. The king."

He removed the velvet bag of the white chess set from his deep red coat pocket, no longer wearing his military uniform as he had packed them tightly into a battered suitcase before departing, and peered inside. He carefully fingered the pieces in the casing until he felt the pointed top of the one he was searching for. Pulling his discovery out, he had procured the ruler.

Ed took a few seconds to study the object, feeling the grooves of the white shape and touching the crown. He remembered that Mustang told him to polish the bottom, to take good care of it. "The bottom," he whispered and his fingers felt for something unusual.

When he flipped it over, the writing was simple: _Amestris Games and Boards Company 1888_. It was stone engraved onto the bottom, and Mustang was right, there was dirt encrusted into the round furrows. On a hunch, Ed decided it was best to try and twist his thumb and forefinger around the base to see if anything would happen, and luck was on his side for once. The circular foundation of the white king screwed off and dethatched itself, revealing a hollow core. Inside it was a slip of rolled up paper and Ed pulled it gently out, swiftly glimpsing over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching.

What was written on the sliver of paper was one simple sentence; five words that contained more meaning than they held themselves to. They only confirmed Ed's further suspicions that he suspected of the game, and he was most definitely correct. There was more to a chess board than the naked eye can see. It was up to the player to move all the pieces.

There was a reason that Mustang tapped the checkered board two times before he said certain sentences, and now he knew why—it was a code.

He knew now that the clues dropped were meant for him to decipher, and Mustang knew that Ed would. Edward knew that the _pawns_, or some of the people of Amestris including a few of the military, were slowly disappearing and that his own nation (the King) could be torn apart from the inside. He knew that the research journals of alchemists around the country were finding their way out of their original owners' hands, and was sure now that there was something missing, a conspiracy still further down the winding path that even his cunning superior could not figure out.

And although Ed had unraveled these points within little time, not one thing could prevent the chilling numbness that those five words sent up his spine.

_The enemy seeks the Truth._


	2. Fullmetal Heart

**Chapter Two: **

**Fullmetal Heart**

Puffs of gray smoke floated into the sky, enclosing the near space in speckles of stray particles and very little light. Resembool was as calm and serene as ever. It was a quaint town in eastern Amestris that served as the renowned home of the Elric brothers. The hills, as always, were a brilliant shade of dark emerald green and were rolling gently past the edge of the night heavens.

"Resembool station!" The railroad engineer shouted loudly and, sure enough, the train had pulled into to the grassy expanse that was the eastern sector of Amestris.

Edward Elric sighed. Part of him dreaded leaving the supposed comfort of his coach, but his mind lingered to the chess set hidden in his coat pocket. No. He would have to continue on. He had to face them eventually, and there was not one thing that should stop him from entering that war. If nothing else, he was too curious for his own good. But he knew that these were important matters. He was a State Alchemist, albeit without alchemy itself, but still a member of the military.

Instead of contemplating further, he grabbed his one battered suitcase from the upper compartment above his seat and carried it with one arm over his shoulder, lazily slinging it there like it weighed barely anything at all.

He felt his shoes take him past the town, fruit stands and numerous wandering sheep passing him by. The dirt road kicked up dust, sending dense but fairly minute clouds above the ground while crickets began to chirp as a signal to the beginning of evening. Then he spotted it. It was a yellow house, a slanted roof, and a sign that stated "Rockbell Automail" in the front. Ed smelled the strangely welcoming scent of metal and oil with an eccentric mix of apple pie.

He was home at last.

A black and white dog with an automail leg barked at him. Whether it was with glee or trepidation, he couldn't be so sure, but he was willing to bet on the latter. Den generally liked visitors, especially if those visits included him and his younger brother. He could not help but wonder if she could sense the unnerving and sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he had begun to experience ever since he had opened the bottom of that chess piece and grudgingly agreed to the role Mustang gave him. He would not be surprised if the old girl could sense it seeping out from his walking form.

Hastily climbing up the wooden steps that led up to the yellow home, he heard the uneven pounding of his artificial leg and flesh leg on the porch. Nervously, he carefully placed two knocks on the front door with his right fist, expecting to hear a very loud yell of indignation and disproval at Ed's utter _nerve _to bother showing his face around here, especially in front of _them_.

"Right," the alchemist breathed to himself, "Duck when the wrench comes." As an added thought, he slapped his forehead, obviously feeling stupid for forgetting something. He scrunched up his eyebrows with his eyes and sighed irritably. "Crap. I should have brought earrings. At least Al I can deal with…a little."

Without his notice, the door creaked open. Out came a short woman, and even to Edward that wasn't an understatement. She had gray-brown hair that was pulled back into a tight and bizarre bun that stuck up on top of her head and pointed upward as if something was holding it up. There were bags under her eyes and crow's feet at the corners. She wore round spectacles, a white apron, tiny leather slippers, and a long-sleeved green dress. In her mouth, which was a thin, disappointed line, there was a long pipe where she puffed out smoke.

"Welcome back, Ed," the old woman said as she took out her pipe and held it in one of her wrinkly palms. Her tone was almost menacing, and for the first time in his seventeen years, Edward was afraid of Granny Pinako. Clearly, _someone _told her about his…dilemma.

His feet stuck to the ground and for some odd reason, he felt as if he couldn't move, that something like glue kept him in one place and refused to let him step forward. It was most likely because of this that Pinako glared at him suspiciously, earning Ed a disproving shake of her head and a sentiment of "Well, are you just going to stand there as decoration or come inside, pipsqueak?"

At that his head snapped up to attention and he snarled at her, his eyebrow twitching in irritation. "What was that, you undersized termite! I'm taller than you _and_ a lot of other people now!"

"You're still a puppy to those military dogs!"

He crossed his arms, angrily leaning forward to face the old woman. "And you can't be tall enough to reach the carpet, you ancient hag!" Ed huffed, golden eyes meeting her own and filled with full-blown agitation. Then, he put on a smug smirk. "I bet the carpet doesn't have a thread smaller than you."

The grandmother squinted at him, playing along in a tenacious banter. "Foul, tiny shrimp."

"Kernel on the cob!" He shot back.

"Short stock!"

"Bite-sized shriveled up bean with a—" Ed started to say before he was rudely cut off by a door banging wildly in his eyesight. Before he knew it, he and Granny had begun to face each other, his arms crossed over his chest and hers stiffly on her hips. None of them had heard the frantic footsteps of Winry tread forcefully down the stairs and straight into their faces. And as the entrance flew open, Ed had absolutely no time to duck away from the metal wrench from smacking him directly above his hairline.

He collapsed backward with a tremendous _thud _and was seen next rubbing the top of his head. He had somehow reached the bottom of the three steps that led to the front porch and effectively landed on his behind, legs sprawled out and all. The tool that had hit him was some meters away and was dusted with the dirt from the ground. The blond was no better.

Winry, with her fair hair swaying gracefully across her back and loose from her normal ponytail, had her azure eyes set on the alchemist before her. She was furious, but anyone that knew her could safely say that that was an understatement. They were twinkling with hatred and Ed was well aware that the feeling was directed towards him. He chuckled nervously under his breath.

"Um, Winry…?" He mumbled cautiously all the while attempting to push himself up and back onto his feet, making no move to pick up the wrench and give it back to her. If he did, the effort would only be the death of him. "W—Winry?" Ed blinked and suddenly the mud on his shoes was very interesting.

He heard a scrape in the background and a few more footfalls and realized that Alphonse had arrived on the scene. _Great_, he thought in a bland tone, _Three people are about to murder me and throw the corpse all the way to East City_.

Al bit his lip, his line of vision shifting shakily from his childhood friend and his elder sibling.

"Brother?" The youngest Elric questioned when his sight set on the pair before him. Sure, he was more than disappointed with his brother's decision to accept the military's advances and allow himself to be placed as a colonel in some war, but he would show Ed just how upset he was in a more civilized manner than the prosthetics mechanic.

To his query, no one answered and soon Al noticed why. Winry was giving Ed the stare-down and it was plain to anybody that the latter was losing this round. The Rockbell girl growled, his fists curled up and tight, and the staring contest was blatantly won. Her upper lip went up, showing her teeth and glinting in the early moonlight. It was evident that the scene would soon grow into an ugly one. Al almost dreaded it, but some part of him felt that his stupid brother deserved it.

What if he didn't come back from Briggs? What if they lost him? Edward was the only person of his blood relatives left, but that was not the only reason he refused to lose him. He was his _brother_. Aside from the two remaining Rockbells, the siblings were closer than normal ones were. They had been through so much together that they trusted everything to one another. Al probably knew more things about Ed than even Winry did, and that was saying something. He also had a hunch that Winry could care about his brother a little too much, not that he minded. It was a little fun to tease.

"Alchemy freak!" She shouted fiercely as she made to punch Ed in the gut, but she stopped herself. Her breath was heavy after that and her lips were sealed shut. There was a nasty silence after that and no one dared to speak. Suddenly, Winry fell to her knees and right in front of Ed, the pants of the greasy jumpsuit she wore receiving a healthy amount of dust.

The State Alchemist did not have an inkling or an idea with what to say next. He simply stood still, looking down at her with a mixture of horror and guilt. Her head was bowed in such a pathetic-looking defeat that he was at a loss. What had Ed done? He hadn't said anything of relevance yet, had he?

"Ed, you're such an idiot!" The blue-eyed girl pounded a fist deep into the dirt, a squelch resounding and abruptly it seemed like the crickets stopped chirping their goodnight song. Edward still didn't know what to say, so he just stared, dumbfounded. What had he done?

"I…" Both fists slammed to the floor, causing the pebbles beneath Ed's feet to tremble ever so slightly. "I…I hate you!"

He could hear Al in the backdrop and his surprised intake of breath. Pinako had not moved an inch. But worst of all, he heard Winry start to cry. Ed despised himself whenever he made her do that. It was always his fault, so why couldn't he fix it just as easily as it began? Sometimes, he really agreed with someone when they called him an idiot, and this was one of those times that he did. Hesitantly, Ed knelt down on his faux leg and brushed his hands on her shoulders, a little embarrassed with his actions as his cheeks began to color pink.

Edward sighed and glanced at the top of his friend's head. "Winry…"

"No! You don't get it you idiot!" In response to her yell, Ed's eyes widened. What did she mean? "You never tell me anything! I know there's more! Why are you going to the stupid war? Why are you making Al wait? Why are you making _me _wait?" She gasped at what she said then paused before rethinking what she was going to say next.

"I don't care about your stupid Equivalent Exchange! Nothing's equivalent if you…" Winry's tears turned into frantic sobs and Ed's grip on her shoulders only tightened. "…if you…"

"If I what?" He responded quietly.

The girl looked him in the eye, emotions pouring out with such a force that Ed felt the need to stumble backward. The blonde punched the ground harder and shouted with a sheer magnitude that shook almost everything in sight.

"You stupid moron!" She yelled at the top of her lungs, gazing at him in the face, "What if you don't come back?"

A hush and a few moments later, the world turned into something that seemed all for unforgivable. The eldest Elric stood up and let go of his best friend's shoulders, brushing himself off from all of the gathering filth on his clothing. A second later and a hand was outstretched toward the shaking form before him, and while she looked at it intently, she made no move to take it in her own. But Ed still kept it there, patiently avoiding her stare.

"Heh," he silently breathed, "You really are an idiot." Winry's pupils flashed in what could be called anger, but was quickly left behind. He went on, "What makes you think I won't come back? Why are you so worried anyway? "

She took his hand and stood up alongside him, wiping away stray tears with her free arm. "You're just brainless. What makes you think you're invincible, alchemy geek?"

Ed smiled with a closed mouth as a reply, motionless and blushing off to the side. He shook his head. "I never said I was, and _you_ never answered my question."

ooo

The next day came as quickly as the previous one and Ed had woken up early to have a walk around town. Alone. The morning was late now, but something was one his mind and he didn't care. His feet dragged him to wherever he willed them too: through the fields of sheep and cows and away from the Rockbell household. If anything, he needed to be as far away from there as possible. At first, he really didn't have a clue as to what he was searching for. He felt like he was a wanderer, like before, but he corrected himself.

He was still wandering.

The truth was, he was more than troubled about what happened last night. He had made her _cry _and of all of the things that he hated to do, that subject was one of the top on his list. He wanted her to be happy, but not only that; he didn't know how to handle someone's tears. What was he supposed to do anyway? It was almost impossible to find out.

"Excuse me sir," an unfamiliar voice rang out from someplace and brought him out of his reverie, "Uh, were you going to buy something?" Ed swiftly looked up. He had been so engrossed within his own thoughts that he did not even realize that he had made his way into the Resembool marketplace. His cheeks turned into a rosy shade, gulping as he turned his back on the plump middle-aged woman in a dusted apron.

"No," he muttered embarrassed, "S—Sorry I bothered you." As he walked off, hands shoved in his coat pockets, he heard a distant call of "Come back anytime sir!" He thought that he ignored the words, but they somehow came back and lodged an undeniable something down his throat. He tried to swallow the feeling down, but it just would not budge. Then he couldn't quite ignore it anymore…

_Come back anytime? _

He kept going on, afraid to break his stride. Ed told himself to keep going; otherwise he wouldn't have the strength to move forward. Whether he willed her to or not, Winry was holding him back from going to Briggs, but he needed to do this. Mustang, as much as he found that man almost more despicable than the homunculi, had entrusted him with information that he had a sensation (suspicion?) that only he was supposed to know. His country was in danger. People were counting on him and even though they never really asked him to do it, that included Alphonse and the rest of the people he cared about. They were part of Amestris too. Ed could never bring himself to let them down. He was the Fullmetal Alchemist, alchemy or none. A duty was left out for him to carry out, and he did not want to be the one responsible for the death of so many people.

No. Not again.

Nearby, the alchemist caught a glance at some of the younger men of Resembool. There was about four of them, three of which he did not recognize, but one looked unusually familiar. Maybe he saw the face before, somewhere in his distant childhood. It was difficult to tell. Edward had not associated himself with his lost childhood very often. There were things that occurred afterward that were too hard to forget, so in essence, that made the events before then even more of a challenge to remember.

Ed wanted to stride right past them, but one of the young men, a brunette with messy hair that was halfway past his ears, olive eyes, and a firm chin stopped him. His skin was tanned as if he worked outside often, which Ed didn't doubt. Many of the men in Resembool were workers on the farm or herders. He had lean muscle, different from his own fighting build, and a square-shaped nose. But somehow, he looked _very _familiar indeed.

With a crooked smile, the teenager who cut the State Alchemist's advance short with a hand on his shoulder asked, "You're Edward Elric, right?"

He was a little startled at first, blinking rapidly in the mere beginning of the situation, but then Ed relaxed. "That's me," he gaped, raising an eyebrow in the process, "Sorry, but who are you?"

The young man, who looked to be about the same age as Edward himself, laughed quite loudly. Then he replaced his hand back to his side and his chest shook with a happy mirth. To say the least, Ed was more confused than ever. Who the heck was this guy anyway? Did he have a problem, or was he just insane? Ed admitted that he met many strange folk around and met a great deal more apprehensive behavior. It was almost as if he could never keep his guard down, so without knowing it, his fists raised slowly to eyelevel.

The unidentified kid shook his head with surprise in response to the defensive maneuver. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! It's nothing like that!" He scratched the back of his unruly locks of hair. "Heh, you probably think I'm crazy, don't you?"

"That's right," Ed mumbled under his breath, unto which the boy asked if he said anything, earning a quick refusal from the original speaker.

"Well anyway, do you remember me? Name's Pitt. We were childhood friends?" The brunette raised his eyebrows as he awaited an answer. But Ed definitely did not expect that. He was currently at a standstill, needless to say, he was caught off guard.

"Um. Well…"

Pitt chuckled again and he was beginning to seriously get on Ed's nerves, what with that stupid laugh and _random _happiness. People like that pissed him off. This guy was way too happy for his own good and he somehow just couldn't take it anymore. He growled quietly, but even then, his angry flare seemed to be blatantly ignored.

"It's ok," Pitt said jovially, "Maybe this will help spark up the memories?" Without knowing it, Ed was suddenly hit with a good amount of dirt in his face, along with an annoyingly familiar statement of "Can't take that shrimp?"

_Shit_, Ed groaned in his head, _it's Pitt, that stupid kid from when we were little. I can't believe I miss the bastard right now._

Edward wiped the grime off of his cheeks and some stayed smeared on his nose. "Oh," he moaned, "It's you again."

"That's right, short stuff! But looks like the tiny shrimp grew up! You're taller than me by an inch!" Pitt's green eyes twinkled in delight but Ed wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face. He resisted. Well, _almost_ resisted. In fact, the feat was simply too challenging to resist that the end result was the renowned State Alchemist kicking his so-called "rival" in the shins.

Pitt yelled out in agony as he felt the lower part of his legs swell up into a vicious purple bruise. "What the hell? Why does your leg feel like _steel_?"

"That's because it _is _steel," Ed crossed his arms, barely noticing the fact that the other boys behind the one he just attacked were now forming defensive positions themselves. "It's called _automail_." His voice sounded exactly as if he knew something that the other did not. To any onlooker, it would be like a crazed war veteran giving strange and unusual punishment to a piece of stone that he thought was an unlawful subordinate.

"Why didn't you use your flesh leg?" Pitt huffed while rubbing his aching joints in frustration. "Are you wild or something? What did I ever do to you?"

"Don't ever call me short, you bastard!"

"I said that you were taller than me!"

Ed's golden eyes twitched, clearly irked with the person before him. "Then consider it as repayment for what you _used to call me _when I still went to school here! Got it? Who's short now? You're on your knees!"

Pitt finally stood up all the way and looked the elder Elric up and down. His pouted his lips and had an equally livid expression, but urgently used a free hand to placate the others behind him as an attempt to tell them all to ease their stances. He rolled his dark green eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to let it out as somberly as possible. From then on he knew that the rumors were true: it was dangerous to call the Fullmetal Alchemist anything that might suggest that he was below the average height. He had no desire to try it again.

"Right, right, whatever," he exhaled noisily while Ed continued to seethe, "Listen, I hear you're a colonel in the Amestrian military, plus you're the Fullmetal Alchemist." The green-eyed young man held out his right arm as if to shake and offered it to the person he was addressing, but Ed disregarded it. "I'll tell you my name again. I'm Pitt. I used to shove dirt in your face when you were litt—I mean, _younger_. I know you're in the military and that you are some alchemist prodigy. I just wanted to ask if you can help me and my friends here—" He used an arm to gesture to the men behind him, "—get a couple of spots as soldiers in the Drachman conflict."

Edward was too stunned to say something in reply, so he took that as a queue to continue on. "Military officials are starting to go around Resembool and other towns around here for the draft, so there are a lot of guys here that want to join in," Pitt scratched his forehead, slightly nervous and flustered."We want to join the military."

Ed lost his left leg in a failed attempt to revive his mother in the taboo of human transmutation. His right arm was a sacrifice he willingly gave up to the Gate in order to pull Alphonse's soul from behind it and attach it to a cold, unfeeling, suit of armor. His own little brother had given up his soul to save Edward from what could have been a fatal assault and returned his stolen right arm. And finally, it was the older brother that lost his ability to perform alchemy so that he could, once again, pull Al from behind the confines of the Gate.

They had lost it all. They had gained it back. But even if the two brothers had, there was still a reminder and Ed was fully aware of it. He refused to allow more people to see hell and that even included this idiot before him. Ed _knew _hell. He lived through it once before and he couldn't help but have the feeling that he would have to again sometime soon.

If there was one thing that he learned from anyone who spent their lives in the military, it was that war _was_ hell. That was one thing that the blond could admit he respected Roy Mustang for. His superior officer, now Fuhrer, had fought in the Ishvallan Civil War. But even though war seemed too far away from Edward, he had the knowledge of someone that had experienced one head on and nearly lost everything he ever cared about because of it.

Ed chuckled darkly and glanced up with a grim façade. "Look," he said, "Think about what the hell you're getting yourself into before tying a leash around your neck."

"But…!" Pitt countered, but to no avail. Ed had already beaten him to it.

"You're lucky. The bastard Fuhrer hasn't made the draft absolute yet. You still have a choice." Ed jarringly smirked and squinted up at them. "I'm going to ask you a question." To this, Pitt and the others nodded hurriedly so he went on. "Have you seen hell?"

One of the young men standing aside, a dirty blond one with blue eyes and a round face answered bravely. "What are you talking about?"

Ed shook his head as a gesture that signified a 'no' and asked the question a second time. "Have you seen hell?" To this, the Elric only saw blank expressions. No one made a move to say anything else and he knew that he had won this round. Although it was certainly a noble gesture to want to assist your country with an inevitable adversary, he wanted nothing more than to save a couple of clueless teenagers from a fiery pit of gunfire and explosions.

Of death…

Of hurt…

Of unyielding desperation…

"I joined the military for my own reasons and I'm still in it for other things," Ed kept on, unfazed. "I don't regret it, but you might."

"But we want to do something for Amestris! This is our country! We want to fight!" Another one courageously fired at him and Ed thought he kind of looked like he could be part Xingese.

"Fine. The hell with it," Edward stated blandly. "You want to fight so badly? Be my guest. If you get fucked up in a hole with a bomb down your throat or watch people's limbs get chopped off like they're useless pieces of crap, then go ahead! Join the military!" He glared at them and their shocked faces, shoving his hands deep into his pants' pocket. "You haven't seen half of what I've seen, and I haven't been to war yet," he snarled and his eyes went dark again.

"I'm a dog of the military," Ed said as he pointed to his chest with his thumb. Then he pointed at the four people in his line of sight. "_You _aren't."

Pitt seemed on the verge of a breakdown. A hand was covering his eyes and he was breathing heavily. Finally, he wiped what looked like a faint sheen of sweat from his features. "Even so," he replied to Edward, "I don't care. I'm still joining. My father is out there." The others behind him nodded in agreement, apparently adamant about their strained decision-making. Ed wanted to slap them upside their heads.

Ed crossed his arms again, this time very tightly. "Fine," he stated aloud in an ominous tone. "I'll get you in. If I can't convince you to stay the hell away, I guess I'll see you on the battlefield." He stared them straight in the eye and stood up immediately, showing them his full height.

"Get on the train tomorrow at noon. It's going to be a military train and there will be officers on board. It's going around the East area to pick up drafted recruits. Show papers that prove your age. I'm the only exception. It will be your only ticket to North City. They'll look you over when we get there. If you're lucky," he corrected himself firmly, "well, _unlucky, _you're going to Briggs."

With all this information in tow, the teenagers puffed out their chests and frantically saluted to him in a rush. Once again, Ed ignored the notion.

"And," the Fullmetal Alchemist added in a stern voice, "Don't be late."

He turned his back on them, not noticing that the four boys that he left behind were still stuck in their mismatched effort to be respectful to a superior officer. But when he did finally realize it, he was already five feet away. So a few moments later in the distance, the four of them heard a quiet, but clear, "At ease."

ooo

Finally, the day had come. Ed had no desire to think about the disastrous incident yesterday. He did not want to think about the kind of terrible trouble had had put those oblivious people into. Part of him felt guilty that he said anything at all, but he knew, deep in his mentality, that no matter what he did those men were never going to change their minds. He had done all he could and that's exactly what he told himself.

It was fifteen minutes until noontime. If he wasn't mistaken, the train had already arrived at the station in Resembool. Ed could just barely make out the gray hues of smoke that led out to the great, turquoise sky overhead. There were no clouds today and the sun was shining up high in a yellow-white blare. However many times he embarked on a mission he wasn't sure if he would come out alive from, he found that nature was always the master at mocking him. When he was at the front of the train station, the weather was no different.

"Promise me you'll be back safe, Ed. I'll never forgive you if you don't." Winry Rockbell sniffed as calmly as she could possibly muster. "You're an idiot and I'm still mad at you, but you're not invincible either."

"Right. I know, Winry. I promise to come back in one piece and with an intact leg." He felt the difference in weight in his left leg's automail. Winry had attached the new model designed for freezing temperatures the previous night and he could feel the lighter mass to it. Like when he travelled to Briggs the first time, he was fitted with a prosthetic limb that was rich in carbon to prevent frost damage and lighter to help with his movement.

The girl with her golden terraces of silky hair blinked up at her friend and instantly turned her gaze downward, cheeks tinting slightly. "You can replace automail," she mumbled and it took Ed quite a bit more effort just so that he could hear her properly, "but you can't replace a life, Ed."

She looked up again, facial expression a determined one. "You better come back you alchemy freak. You made a promise."

At that, he nodded his 'yes' and the binding promise was made, a pact that held him more tied together than the strings that kept him attached as the infamous dog of the military. But that was the flow of his life, and he realized that it was time to accept it. With that, he hesitated, thinking twice when his hand hovered over Winry's bare shoulder when she wore her sleeveless white shirt and black skirt. His dark blue military uniform stood out like a sore thumb and the number of stars that indicated his relatively high ranking glinted in the sunlight.

His hand still hovered until he settled for placing it on her shoulder and turned his head away to avoid her searching ocean-like eyes. He gulped and replied, "It's a promise." Realizing their close proximity, both of them nearly jumped as quickly away as they had come near. But Winry was feeling a little braver than normal today.

"Uh," she gasped out when she worried her lip. Uncertainly she held out her arms to him as if asking for an embrace. It was now or never. If he somehow _didn't _keep his promise, Winry wanted a good memory, but she also did not want to think about what would happen if he failed. So she simply held her arms outstretched, not really expecting anything. She decided that if Ed wasn't going to respond to the gesture in the next couple of seconds, she would forget about it. But, surprisingly, Edward _did _respond.

He hugged her back.

"R—Right," Ed stuttered after they unlatched and stared rather embarrassingly off to their sides while blushing madly. "I'll see you around, automail junkie."

"Oh—Ok. Bye. Ed."

With that, Edward turned around, the Rockbell girl in his wake, and stepped with a tentative foot into a middle coach of the military issued locomotive. Soldiers around him saluted respectfully, murmurs of "Colonel Elric, sir!" ringing throughout his ears. He caught a glimpse of the four boys he regretted recruiting, showing official looking papers to a sergeant in uniform at the entrance to the train. Steam billowed out into the air and he could smell the ashy sensations of burning coal. In a sense he was relieved to be out on the tracks again. Travel really did suit him, but he couldn't help but wonder if he was going to make it back to travel ever again.

_Stop thinking like that_, he told himself. After all, it wouldn't do to die. But then again, that was something that could not be controlled. He wondered what Winry would do if that happened. Would she even care? Granny Pinako? Who would even give a damn if he collapsed on the spot? Sometimes, he wondered if people should care about him at all. He was notorious for bringing trouble and getting people hurt. But then, maybe they did care after all.

He thought of his brother and of how he sacrificed his soul to save him during the Promised Day.

_Maybe…_

Then Ed thought of the fact that Alphonse had completely paid no attention to him as he shouted that he was going off to Briggs at noon. He didn't even send him off. Al was probably mad at him, and Ed felt a hole start to form in his heart. At that point, he really hoped that he could come back if only just to apologize. He was sorry that he had to go off to war, but that was his job and this was all he could do to protect his nation. Ed had seen hell already, and therefore, it justified his reasoning for going in the first place. He had a leash complete with a collar, but he also had a choice.

This life suited him, not Pitt. He knew what he was going into. He knew how to fight because he had done it countless times before, and one thing was for sure; there were people out there that needed him and his alchemic intelligence.

But Edward wished nothing more right at that moment than to say 'goodbye' to his brother, because, even if he didn't want to admit it to himself, there could be a chance that maybe…

_Maybe…_

"…I won't see him again," Edward whispered under his breath, clenching his right fist on his lap and watching the rolling emerald hills of his hope and home sift by.

And as he pondered if he would ever see Alphonse again, he was unaware of the disturbance in the last cargo cart of the moving train. Boxed weapons like machine guns, inactivated grenades, and packages of bullets shifted from side to side as the tracks slid on by. But in one corner, there was a box that budged more than the others, and behind it was the youngest Elric brother. His agenda was a complicated one and his gaze was fierce, unlike the gentle demeanor that the brother usually gave off.

He breathed steadily as if expecting something, and indeed he was, for as more cargo rumbled nearby, he mumbled something that would have been almost incomprehensible if it weren't for his silent corner. Al kept still though, thinking of ways to defend himself if he had to clap his hands in an alchemical reaction. Then he thought of how Edward could no longer do that and his resolve only was reinforced. Alphonse Elric was going to challenge the Truth again to get something back, and he wanted to be there to protect his older brother if he could as Ed had done so many times beforehand to protect Al.

_And that_, Al smiled, _is the law of Equivalent Exchange._

ooo

"First Lieutenant Sergei Char," a heavyset man breathed deeply, voice menacing and eerie enough to send cold chills throughout a room. His hands were large, muscles boldly sticking out from underneath his many layers of the fur-trimmed, dark brown Drachman military uniform. He had jet black hair and a beard, devious wild eyes, the color of the sky before a lightning storm. He was middle-aged and tall, but definitely one of the strongest and the number of silver stars on the shoulders of his clothing indicated his high rank.

Before him, was a scrawny man with mahogany hair and bushy eyebrows. This officer was known to him as his aide, though there was numerous ranks in between theirs that separated them. The man was nervous, but attempted not to show it, and the bulky superior officer did nothing to show that he knew what he was thinking.

"Yes, sir, General Alik Albatross, sir!" Char saluted stiffly, putting his boots together with a determined facial expression. It looked as if he was absolute in staying true to his post. After all, the General was a man of no humor or warmth. The man stuck to the frigidity of the north.

Alik Albatross smirked knowingly, again earning the feeling that something evil was about to enter their locked room. "I assume you know that the Amestrians are ready. We need to be able to take them on, and with the information we now possess, Amestris will soon know the wrath of Drachma." He laughed, the sound echoing in the hallways nearby. Almost as quickly, he halted, gazing his aide straight in his intimidated eyes.

"Char!" He ordered and soon the soldier snapped back into attention.

"Yes, sir!"

The Drachman general crossed his huge arms, storming eyes twinkling with something greater than hate. He clenched his stained teeth while he growled, "Order our spies to close in on the border. With this many soldiers from the enemy about to come in, we'll have more than enough supplies. Make sure that when we attack, we retrieve the State Alchemists." Albatross snarled, "We need to be cautious and not trust any of them. Otherwise, we'll end up just like we did when that Kimblee had Drachma fooled."

"And Char," the general eyed his lower officer again, "Who is Fuhrer Mustang's most trusted alchemist? He could be of some use to us."

Sergei Char saluted one last time, inhaling deeply. "The Fullmetal Alchemist, sir."

**AN: And the plot thickens! Stay tuned for the next chapter for bloody warfare and a look into the definition of a soldier, in which this story will turn into a rated M. Will Ed be willing enough to take the life of someone else in order to save himself and others? What does Alphonse plan to do and what does the Truth have to do with it? Read and review your thoughts!**


	3. The Definition of a Soldier

**AN: I know this story is supposed to be weekly, but I decided to post this chapter early. Happy reading.**

**Chapter Three:**

**The Definition of a Soldier**

"Attention, new recruits," a stout, commanding officer shouted above the thrum of the many voices of military men, "Line up single file for registration and health examination!"

They had arrived in North City, the hustling and bustling town of eternal freezing precipitation, and Ed absolutely abhorred it. He never liked the cold before he gained his artificial limbs, and even after, when his artificial limbs went down to one, he despised this weather all the more. It made his joints ache, especially where his automail port attached to his nerves, and the worst part of it was he had to hide it or risk unwanted questions from freshly enlisted soldiers.

Ed sighed and let out a foggy breath when he finally stepped off of the train, battered leather suitcase in one white-gloved hand. Normally, the trip to the north of Amestris would only take about two days with a non-stop train ride from his hometown, but not this time. It had taken approximately three days as the conductor travelled along the east side of the country in order to pick up drafted men. They stopped from city to city, small town to even smaller town, until, to the Elric's dissatisfaction, the whole compartment where he sat filled up to the brim.

With his head bowed and slow flurries of snow beginning to accumulate on his uniform jacket, Edward made his way to the covered stalls where the tables of forms and secretaries sat, frantically scribbling names and dipping old fashioned pens into inkwells. Each enlisted man was given a uniform or was quickly being dragged into a nearby cobblestoned building in order to be fitted into one. Others were told that they would pick up their uniforms and supply packs in Fort Briggs or the camp that was close to it, while some were lining up in front of yet another building for medical checkups and eye testing.

It was a frenzied formal procedure, and Ed deduced that it was probably for the best. Usually when preparing volunteers or conscripts, the way was paved for them in a cleaner manner, but the war was coming, and he could only guess how fast it would come knocking on their doorstep. Factories producing weaponry were already booming all over the countryside, indicating that this coming conflict would be even larger than he had originally suspected. As he could blatantly see, things were making a turn for the worst.

Walking toward one of the examination stalls, Ed stopped to briefly glance at what seemed to be a propaganda poster glued onto one of the many concrete pillars of the complex near the train station. It was slightly weathered down, no doubt from the constant snowfall that the North Area seemed to boast, but the message was indeed palpable. On it was a painted boot of a military officer that was about to step on the Drachman flag; it consisted of a white backdrop with a deep red stripe going horizontally through the middle, the silhouette of a fierce flying horse on top of it and a scythe behind the creature. Underneath the heel of the boot were the bold purple letters that read, "_Step on it._" and directly below that were even blockier words that said, "_Join the Auxiliary Military, saviors of our time! Men ages 18 to 30._"

He huffed, not disgusted with the poster; the youngest State Alchemist was more than aware that there was no war without propaganda. Without it, no one would join in with the ranks. He hated to admit it, but, with the way the situation was going on now, officers besides the professional military would be needed, although he did wish that they didn't have to be as naïve as Pitt and his witless friends. _They _didn't have to join. They still had a choice no matter how slim the chances of that were becoming. Ed had a hunch that soon the draft would become mandatory and every man that signed up would be expected to arrive, backup or not.

Without noticing, Ed had merely stood before one of the many irritable secretaries that sat behind a desk in the makeshift, miniature offices. She was a stern looking woman with dark brown hair tied tightly into a bun and thin black gloves were worn beneath the long, winter version of the Amestris military uniform; white fur at the neck and all. He could tell from the gold stripes on her shoulders that she was a corporal. Her eyes were the natural piercing blue of their country's people, unlike his golden ones that reflected his own ancestry dating back to Xerxes.

"Excuse me _sir_," the officer said rather irately, "If you're going to enlist within the army, then I suggest that you get on with it, otherwise I'll gladly take on the next scrap of fresh meat behind you." The woman exhaled and kept her lips in a thin line, constantly staring down at her work through rectangular spectacles. "Hurry up and sign the paper with your information so that you can go on to the physicals. It's cold enough in this miserable hellhole."

Edward scratched the back of his head with a gloved hand and sighed, the woman's offensive tone obviously going straight over his head. "Nah, I'm here to transfer to Briggs. I guess I should sign up or something…"

"Do I look like a transfer memo to you? Whoever you are _soldier, _you're wasting my time. You evidently do not have any experience in the life of the military, do you?" The secretary grew angrier and angrier by the second, off-handedly reminding Ed of a fuming Winry. She didn't even bother to look up from her papers and continued to scribble notes from previous clients. "To think that you could just come striding up here, thinking you're _so great _and _asking _for a transfer! What a joke! Who are you anyway?"

When she looked up, had never seen anyone so surprised and horrified at the same time. "Th—Three stars and f—four stripes," the brunette breathed out with a twitching eyelid, "C—Colonel! I'm so sorry! Please forgive my impudence sir! I will no longer carry out anything so brash sir! I mean it sir! It was a grave mistake on my behalf sir!" She saluted and swiftly stood up as she said it, her voice coming out in such a hyperactive and nervous squeal that others seemed to stop what they were doing to sneak a peek.

Ed slapped his forehead and shook his head. If he could say so himself, the life of the military outside of the command center was certainly different and more uptight than he had expected it to be. Honestly, no one really took him up with that much respect in Central. Sure there would be an officer or two that would salute to him in the hallways, but they never really said "sir" so many times over.

"It's ok corporal," the blond replied nonchalantly, "I'm just reporting in. Orders from Mustang." When he realized that she still hadn't slackened her pose he added, "I didn't join the military for the rank."

The flustered woman blinked twice before hesitantly sitting back down and peered up from behind her glasses. She took a deep breath and pursed her lips, trying to wait patiently for her superior to say something of relevance. Needless to say, this action made Ed extremely uncomfortable. It was hard enough that he already advanced two whole rankings in the past one and a half years. Plus, he was already a colonel, a position so high up in the military that it would take years of service to get so far up. He was becoming one of the higher-ups at very a tender age; technically, Ed wasn't even old enough to be in the army yet.

His golden eyes flickered to the documents neatly piled beneath her hands and then back to the woman. If he was supposedly a superior officer, he might as well make an attempt to act like one. "I need a vehicle to get up to Briggs. I could bring some conscripts with me." He exhaled loudly, "I'm supposed report to that bast—I mean Mustang."

He spotted her whispering to another secretary to hold her place as she stood up yet again. "This way sir," she said firmly and he followed her to a back storehouse where numerous bulky cars were kept and fit for a blizzard.

If Ed could count properly in the falling snow, he would say that there were about fifty cars in storage. There were other, larger vehicles other than the few smaller ones that he was being led to. He guessed that those were reserved for bringing more people up and that the one he was going to drive was for the higher ranks.

_Cheapskates_, he thought wearily. The military really did love their pointless ranking system.

"Colonel…um…" the woman seemed at loss for what to say next as they halted beside one of the side doors of a boxy automobile, a number _**879**_ written boldly in white paint on the hood. Its tires were thick and hulking, perfect for treading through thick snowfall. The square windows were fogged up and it was a large, worn out, old fashioned military van with a chipped hunter green coating.

"Edward Elric," Ed finished for her.

"E—Elric? You mean…? Sir?"

He was getting tired of this. Yes he was Edward Elric. Yes he was only seventeen, and _yes _he was already a colonel at his age. He was aware that everyone considered him a prodigy along with Alphonse, but it would help if people didn't lose their sensibility every time they brought it up. He had work to do, that's why he was a colonel, damned paperwork and all that came with the title.

"That's right. Now can you give me the keys to this thing?" Ed said impatiently while pointing a thumb in the same direction as the vehicle. He crossed his arms and looked the rundown machine up and down before nodding to the woman. With that, she mumbled that she would be right back with the keys. While the corporal left hastily, he glared at the hazy windows and muttered something about "the bastard probably becoming too annoyed with waiting so damn long and resulting in more crappy short jokes being blurted my face". A few moments later, the woman was back standing with a pin straight saluting position and a question if she had permission to hand him the object.

"Thanks," the alchemist plainly stated as he grabbed the keys from her open fist. He stared around them and noticed that there weren't any others behind the lower ranking soldier. "You can bring some new recruits up here," he suggested, "Might make the old geezers less cranky about the job if I take a few along."

"Yes sir. I already gathered them up. They're coming up here with Private Vought."

And just as she said it, a group of perhaps eight fidgeting recruits came walking up the snow covered hill from one of the back doors of a health inspection building. A young man with spiky blond hair, a hard jaw with a small amount of unshaved stubble, a dark gaze and a bit of a tan was leading them. He was scrawny, but one could tell immediately from the aura that he gave off that he was fit for the unpredictable possibilities of the military.

"Colonel, sir!" Vought shouted confidently as he saluted, the fellows behind him following suit in slight disarray. "I have brought the recruits. We have just received word from General Armstrong that you are to bring as many as possible up to the Briggs Fortress, sir!"

"Got it," Ed replied and then subsequently nodded over to the man to load them into the van.

Once the task was finished, it wasn't hard to turn the keys to the automobile and rev up the engine. Although it was certainly awkward and uncalled for when a colonel has to accomplish the work of a definite low ranking subordinate, Ed frankly did not care in the slightest. If it was getting him up to that fort, then so be it. What did a couple of soldiers matter anyway? Besides if he heard right, Armstrong had ordered him to take them and he couldn't disobey orders from that woman. She was one of the few people the he and Al legitimately feared, the other being their alchemy teacher, Izumi Curtis. He shuddered at the thought. Major Armstrong's eldest sister was a monster to behold, a genuine article of true unfeminine command.

The ride was smooth for the most part. After all, Ed had learned how to drive not too long ago and he was fast at picking things up. Though he did not want to relieve the memory of Mustang making an attempt to teach him, which resulted into a heated argument on uselessness and words on the Elric's height that really pissed him off. ("You're too short to see over the wheel!") In the end, one of his superior officer's most trusted subordinate, who was recently walking back on two legs thanks to a Philosopher's Stone, Jean Havoc, had to intervene and complete the job of teaching the Fullmetal Alchemist how to drive.

They had left the woman corporal behind in the enlistment stalls and Private Vought watching them leave with a gesture of gratitude. The car rumbled past them and onto the narrow slopes that were paved to lead up the side of the Briggs Mountain Range. If his calculations were correct, they would arrive at the fort in less than thirty minutes. North City was very close to the military base, after all. The residents there made a living from supplying their men with weaponry and, from what he could tell, appallingly tasting rations. There was no way he was looking forward to that.

The eight soldiers in the remaining passenger seats were unquestionably newly enlisted. They lacked the air of experience that the professionals seemed to generate, plus the fact that many of them were fidgeting. Edward couldn't blame them though. They were about to be sent out for target practice.

About fifteen minutes into the ride, he decided that he would break this uncomfortable silence but kept his focus on the improvised trail. "You guys look like you just saw the Fuhrer in a skirt," he chuckled when he saw their amusing reactions to this sentiment through the rearview mirror. "Wouldn't blame you. That useless alchemist doesn't look too good in anything he wears."

After a few seconds of utter quiet, Ed smirked, the smile reflecting off of the mirror so that the others riding behind him could see it clearly. "What," the teen persisted, "thought I was some edgy bastard colonel with a god complex and a blown up ego?"

"Well…" a blond recruit courageously stated, but Ed could tell he was nervous, so he continued for him as a motion of said "respect".

"S'okay," he said, "wouldn't blame you for that one either." Ed made a turn around a boulder and soon they were just past a small forest of evergreens. In the distance, the gigantic concrete wall of the infamous Briggs Fortress stood as a tiny speck in view. His gloves slid calmly on the round, leather object that was the driver's wheel. "Survival of the fittest. That's kind of important out here."

The same blond soldier, who seemed to be no older than Ed replied again. "I'm sorry, uh, sir. Why?"

"It's obvious. Don't get yourself killed." He winced at the memory of the threatening cobalt stare of the General. That woman was considered a so-called Ice Queen, but he thought of her more as an Ice Demon or a tigress ready to pounce on her prey."And, well, um…" He flinched a second time as the barbed wire surrounding the fortress came into sight.

"…You'll see when you meet their general."

They pulled up in front of the fortress in almost the same manner Ed had a little more than two years ago when he and Al were still on their journey to find a way to restore their bodies back to normal. Except this time, and he was more than pleased about it, they weren't attacked. And just like before, standing menacingly at the edge of her towering stronghold of seemingly daunting men and granite, was the head of them. She had a piercing gaze, as if she could see through every lie that reached her ears or every strategic preparation. She was unmovable, the rock, a white tiger.

Her light blond hair swayed in the wind and a good portion of it covered her right eye, scowling lips ready to yell orders or profanities if need be. Her skin was pale enough to fit in with her surroundings, but one look at the Ice Queen and you knew that she was not somebody that you could freely act upon wanton orders with. She meant business, and that's exactly what earned her place.

"Well if it isn't the Fullmetal Alchemist and brand new fresh meat for the grizzly bears," General Olivier Mira Armstrong said with a hard pitch. "You took long enough. That unintelligent dimwit, Mustang has been getting on my last nerve." For an officer that was promoted two ranks above the one she had two years previously, she had a right to be commanding, but Ed could not help but agree on her comment on their leader of the country. At least that was one thing he was not afraid to agree with out loud.

ooo

They had expanded the Briggs Fortress while he was gone from it. _Probably for the war effort_, he mused. But Ed supposed that it was right for the cause. With this many people coming into the place and adding more layers of camps and dorms, it had to be done otherwise there would be an inevitable risk of overcrowding. New rations would come in about every seven days, and they even commissioned four more military chefs for the expanded kitchen area. Briggs was already an impressive garrison, but there must have been over a thousand men sleeping in the barracks without the expansions, probably an exceptionally great sum now. Not to mention the small, blizzard-safe cabins that had been sprouting up like weeds in their backyard. Even more soldiers were kindly offered a place to stay in or near North City.

"Ugh. Fried eggs again," Edward groaned. The food here really was too terrifying to behold.

"I don't know, chief," a familiar voice proposed, "I think those are pancakes."

Ed swiveled around quickly on the metallic cafeteria bench, a hand gripping a charred piece of toast. "What? Breda? What are you doing here?" He shifted in his seat, suddenly aware that the Second Lieutenant was sitting directly across from him, hands folded over an organized tray of suspicious looking breakfast, if it could be considered breakfast.

"What do you think I'm doing here, chief? It is a nasty war coming along, isn't it?" The stocky man replied, dirty blond and light brown hair cut into a short but spiky style with the same stubble along his chin. "Wouldn't want to miss all the fun," the man added sarcastically.

"Aren't you funny?" The alchemist deadpanned.

Heymans Breda sighed into a cup of coffee, choking for a short stint as he tasted the notoriously horrible hot drink that the people of North City brought this far up the mountain range. "Hey, it's just a little humor, chief," he retaliated. "Anyway, I just came over here to tell you that Mustang wants you in the war room in ten minutes. He says it's something important."

The teen exhaled in annoyance and was almost tempted to slam his face into the plastic plate of eggs, or pancakes, as his companion felt the need to dub them. "Great," he said as he scowled in no particular direction at all. With a satisfied nod, Breda went on to continue eating his own fair share while Ed stuffed as much as humanly possible into his mouth. He devoured the deformed whatever-it-was in one bite and slurped down a glass of orange juice, wondering how people could bring citrus this far up north.

Soon after, Ed slammed his two hands onto the cafeteria table, which caused silverware to lurch into the air for a couple seconds before coming unceremoniously down with a tinker. He was noticeably not in a wonderful mood, and Breda was more than happy to steer clear from the alchemist as he shoved his tray onto the cleaning rack.

The hallways to Briggs weren't all the exciting. He hated the cold anyway, and from his brief glimpses of the outside, someone wasn't doing a very good maintenance job with those _ice problems_ littering the ceiling. He breathed out in relief with he finally reached the metallic entrance to the meeting room on the home base. His gloved fingers turned the handles of the double doors and the scene abruptly changed.

"Drachman forces have just declared war on us," a booming voice assumed at full volume. "It's only a matter of time before they start their attack. Our spies have reported that there have been sightings of Drachman soldiers at the bases of the Briggs Mountain Range. They already declared war, so the treaty of non-aggression has been instantaneously uprooted. "

The man speaking was middle-aged, holding the rank of a Major General judging by the middle three gold stripes and one star that graced the shoulders of his navy uniform.

_Probably close to sixty_, Ed guessed. _He's an old geezer._ He had a baggy face with boxy eyebrows above bright blue eyes which donned circular glasses and rectangular features. The man's hair was trimmed short and was graying in some spots, but his mustache was somehow still completely black. His skin was pale, just like most Amestrians, and he had large hands with square fingertips.

"Major General Vulcan," a man that Ed immediately recognized as Mustang spoke in reply to the previous statement, "Our sole duty is to be victorious in this battle. If you have a plan of attack, feel free to share. General Armstrong oversees the overall outcome of the army's movements and I tell her if I approve." The Fuhrer gazed openly in Vulcan's direction. "Your spies have seen something. Don't beat around the bush like you have for the past twelve minutes."

The Major General stuttered and then composed himself. "Y—Yes sir. I propose that we send in a regiment as a surprise attack. They already assaulted our people and many have gone missing from around the country. We wouldn't be the first to show aggression, merely retaliating."

"Good," Mustang responded plainly.

"The spies have reported that there's a Drachman regiment hiding behind one of the mountains closest to the Fortress, Mount Heinkel. They say that they were planning to assault us tomorrow night to try to take the garrison, but if we attack them in the morning and behind their backs, they won't know what hit them."

General Armstrong, whom Ed just noticed was in the room. It was filled with maps and the traditional Amestrian green flag and the silhouette of a white dragon plastered to the back wall, schematics and a detailed drawing of the mountains in a middle high table. She crossed her arms and added in the conversation. "This is all we know so far of their movements," she growled, "It's obvious that they're trying to hide the rest of their soldiers from us. But seeing as there is a risk of damage from them, it's best if we take action first."

Mustang nodded to Edward so that he would walk to one of the rough edges of the table, and Armstrong continued as she glared in the blonde's path. "Elric!"

"Yes m 'am!" He hastily replied.

"Mustang and I agreed that you would lead a brigade. You're fit enough for the role of this mission and you have the necessary knowledge of alchemy." Her famous thin sword was hanging on her waist, and she walked around him as if she was a prowling tiger, but Ed did not like the feeling one bit. "The reason is simple. We want to take a few State Alchemists to make sure the job is done right."

Ed was silent for the better part of the exchange and he knew better than to say 'no' to a person like her. The General was certainly the complete opposite of her emotional younger brother.

Armstrong persisted, "The alchemists going with you will be few, but enough and that will include my idiot for a younger sibling, Major Armstrong, and Mustang." She halted and peered with an intimidating glare to the top of Ed's head. "Though it would be helpful if you still had your alchemic ability, your intelligence on the skill is all we need _and _you will hopefully be able to distinguish arrays that my brother or the Flame cannot just in case the rumors of the disappearing alchemic research notes are true. We need diversity."

Her eyes scanned Edward's position once again before inserting one last outlook. "It's off usual tradition, but the Fuhrer will be participating in this war." She glared at the Flame Alchemist and he took that as a signal to say something of relevance.

"I left the retired and previous Fuhrer Grumman in charge of Central Command. Fire alchemy is more practical on the battlefield than behind a desk," he said as he shrugged.

"Fullmetal," Mustang went on to address one of his most valued subordinates, "The troops will be ready for the mission tomorrow morning and so will you, five AM sharp. Today is a layover for now until the big event. Make the most of it." He smirked and Ed thought he looked more like a cocky bastard than ever before. "Hawkeye is down in the weaponry storage and you can meet her there. Since you're a colonel now, I'd say you should choose your weapons, though it is an interesting concept to think a _short fuse _like you would have the privilege to."

Ed felt his eyelid twitch and knew he was in a tight spot. If he blew up now, he'd have a smug Mustang, a furious Armstrong, and an utterly confused Major General. Instead he spoke with a stark calm tenor. "Yes _sir_. I'll be sure to ask for waterproof gloves on your behalf while I'm there." At this, he saw the Flame's arrogant smirk falter. "You know, just to keep your ability _useful_."

_Elric: fifty, Fuhrer Bastard: one_, he thought confidently.

"You're dismissed, Ed." The raven haired superior officer said while locking in his resentment.

Ed led his feet outside the door and was about to leave entirely until he heard something that caught his attention. In a quick attempt to keep his eavesdropping a secret, he quietly slid behind a nearby corner all and was only two feet away from the door. What he heard made him think about the whispering in the bathroom back in Central, and he couldn't help but wonder if they could somehow be related.

"It has been confirmed that Second Lieutenant Maria Ross has recently disappeared without a trace," the familiar boom of the Major General informed the two others in the room. "Our spies believe that her disappearance and the Brosh Case have some connection, though it is obvious enough that they did not leave on their own accord. Ross was transferred to Briggs as soon as Brosh went missing and she was last seen to be driving a military vehicle close to the border in order to get to her post."

There was a short silence and the sound of a grunt as if someone was thinking hard. Ed pressed his back harder against the metal walls as if trying to absorb the information.

"Her car was found soon after in one of the forests near here and there were signs of a struggle."

"Someone is messing with us," he heard Roy Mustang say in an irritated tone of voice. "Whoever it is knows something and is probably trying to take advantage of the fact that Amestris is in a conflict with Drachma. Either they're trying to diminish our resources by taking officers and citizens, or there's something else out there."

"For once we agree on something, Mustang," came the harsh voice of the woman general. "I think we should send messages to the officers in control of the Eastern, Western, and Southern sectors of the country. Major General Hakuro in New Optain can handle the action."

Ed heard the muffled shuffling of feet and a suggestion that they should probably notify the messengers now and he heard the footsteps grow steadily louder and closer to the exit. Not wanting to get caught, he started to back up into the staircase that led down to the floor with the storage rooms and carefully placed his feet on each step while watching the slope of the stairs at the same time. He was safe for now as the three higher-ups had walked in the other direction, but he kept his back to the stairs in order to keep a look out for them.

Then he suddenly heard a yelp and something firm bump against his back.

"What the—?" The eldest Elric started to say as he turned around to find a boy rubbing his own backside. He was wearing a long leather coat and dark pants. His hair was cropped short in a very slight shade darker blond than Ed's. But then he realized just exactly who the person was and Ed was so furious that his fists began to tremble.

"Al!" He whispered harshly when his younger brother turned around, identical golden eyes wide with shock. "What the hell are you doing here? Didn't I tell you to stay in Resembool?"

"Sorry brother!" Alphonse whispered back, trying to placate his older brother. "I didn't want you to go alone, so I came along in the back of the train!"

"You _snuck in? _You idiot! I told you this is a war! It's dangerous here!"

The younger brother looked the older one confidently in the eye. "Oh, and it's not dangerous for you?" At that, Ed groaned, but Al ignored it and the other Elric couldn't help but wonder if Al had inherited some of his stubbornness. "We said we'd stick together back when we were still searching for a way to get our bodies back to normal, and that includes now. I'm here whether you like it or not, brother."

Their ears picked up the sounds of boots clanking on the ground and Ed moaned.

"Ok, fine!" Ed spoke in a noisy undertone, "Just c'mon before we get caught. You're coming with me to the weapons storage and _then_ we'll talk to the bastard about what we're going to do with you."

The oldest Elric grabbed a hold of his brother's wrist and the two alchemists were soon clamoring down the steps and past wide and soaring doors that looked like they could be the entrances to warehouses, each numbered in fading white paint. They finally stopped in front of a specific door that was numbered _**004**_,where the familiar saluting soldier of First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye stood, her vivid blond hair clipped in a tight messy bun. She had cut her hair short again when Mustang became a general, but it grew out to shoulder length. Two holsters with handguns in them, one a model P226 (a more streamline and recent gun with a short handle, a bottom section painted black, and the top gleaming silver), and another 44 Magnum (a gun with a large-bore cartridge, a more curved stock with finger grips, and a longer, more narrow action bar) were wrapped around her waist.

"Edward, I'll assist you with your weapon choices." She chanced a questioning glance at Alphonse and merely stated a 'hello' before turning her back on them and producing a key that subsequently unlocked the tall doors.

Inside the room was hundreds of metal racks, each separated with shelves and every type of gun Ed could think of were lined up in rows at the back of certain vertical ones. The rifles were in one end of the room and leaned on the back spaces of the concrete walls and floors. Each model was kept with the same type and special modifications made to certain ones of the same model were stored nearby. Pistols were kept similarly, except they had their own slanting shelves that acted like makeshift holsters so that their muzzles were pointed downwards. Grenades were on another corner and hung on the sides of more shelves.

Hawkeye walked up to the handguns and took one of them down carefully, handing Ed a long leather holster with many pockets and clips afterwards.

"Each soldier is required to have a primary weapon, secondary weapon, and a special," she recited dutifully to Edward. "This one, a Webley Revolver, is your secondary. It's a top-break with automatic extraction and involves breaking it open to remove used cartridges from the cylinder. You should be able to use it. It's standard issue." Ed nodded as Al watched curiously, placing the gun into one of the holster pockets.

The woman walked over to the rifles section and the two brothers followed close behind. She clasped a long firearm with a narrow nozzle and a stock handle where the trigger was near the trigger guard area. "This is a Winchester 1895. It will be your best friend." She handed the weapon over, and Ed cautiously slung it onto his back with the strap that was attached.

_Meaning that this is my primary_, he translated in his mind.

"And here," the Hawk's Eye stated in a bored tone when they reached the section that contained special weapons, "are the grenades. You should have pockets in that holster for them. Only use them in an emergency." Both Elrics nodded even though she was only truly addressing one of them. "You had some training in Central in combat and firing. You should be fine. And remember Edward," she said as her hazel eyes seemed softer and more motherly, "These aren't just tools to take lives; they're tools to save them."

ooo

The morning had come too fast for his liking, and after spending five "lazy" days in the Fortress, it came as more than just a wakeup call. As luck would have it, Mustang found out about Alphonse from Hawkeye and Ed didn't have to have the dreaded conversation with the man. He had avoided it all together. The First Lieutenant delivered the message the previous afternoon that Al would have to share a bunk with him, meaning that Ed and Al would fight over the top bunk that night.

Of course they did fight over it as Ed had predicted, and like all the times they fought over candy, toys, and seconds at dinner when they were younger, Al had won that skirmish this time with his infamous strategy of "trip brother and scramble up to the top bed before he does". Sometimes it was hard to believe that either of them were their age, with Al only being a year younger than Edward.

Besides that, it had taken Ed all his might to keep his younger brother out of his mission. Al wanted to come so badly, but he was not an enlisted soldier and Ed did not want him to become one. With a lot of effort, the Elric was able to lock his brother within their room and fluidly order a low ranking officer to keep an eye on that door. As an extra precaution, Ed drew an array with a piece of chalk on the door to their room that would stop Al from advancing any further just in case he tried to use alchemy. Even though Ed did not possess the ability to perform the science anymore, he could use his knowledge of it against his brother.

But now was not the time to think about those things. Soldiers and new recruits were up and dressed in their navy military uniforms, the number of stars or stripes on their shoulder pads reflecting their ranks. Black helmets were given out alongside black overcoats with pallid fur to keep them warm. Extra white or black gloves were handed to those who needed them, and others were quietly getting ready to discharge to their designated post behind Mount Heinkel.

"Sir!" The usually timid Sergeant Major Kain Furey saluted when he reached the Fullmetal Alchemist. He had been promoted one rank from his previous title of Master Sergeant as Mustang was adamant on the idea that he would be Edward's Senior Non-Commissioned Officer. His job was to assist the Colonel with leading a brigade, or in this case because they were mainly an armed cavalry force on a semi-independent operation, it was called a regiment. "Preparations are complete! The Fuhrer is almost ready to deploy!"

"Right," Ed said while checking that he had bullets loaded in his Webley Revolver and extra ammunition tucked in the leather holster that he tied on his waist. He shoved on a helmet and nodded thanks to the young officer with spiky dark hair, black opal eyes, and round glasses. "Thanks Furey," he added when he marched off to the deployment area to meet up with his troops.

Furey followed behind him, carrying a rifle on his back and complicated radio headphones, but then turned another corner. Mustang also ordered the man to be in charge of the radio system just in case they needed some form of communication.

They had finally arrived in the underground passage that would lead straight up to the valley that separated Amestris from Drachma. Included in that valley was the mountain they were looking for, and on the other side, a huge portion of the enemy's army. Ed went up to the front where the Flame and the Strong Arm Alchemists stood waiting. Unusually, Armstrong had asever expression.

Mustang gave Ed a meaningful look and Ed raised an eyebrow. "What?" the blond muttered callously to the man.

"Well, say something _Colonel_."

"_Me_? But you're the Fuhrer!"

When he didn't get anything that would suggest a reply, Ed blew out an annoyed breath. "Bastard," he murmured quietly and looked up at the unsuspecting soldiers that were lined up just a few feet away. "You're now dogs of the military. Congratulations," the alchemist began crudely. "All I have to say for the debriefing would be too much crap, so I'll make it easy for you to understand."

"There's a regiment of Drachman soldiers behind that mountain and our job is to blow those assholes up without them noticing us. So I guess you can say that it's a surprise party we're going to leave them," Ed narrowed his eyes and saw the nervous faces of the recruits. "You'll follow us to the side of the mountain and you'll shut up the whole time. When Mustang signals, snipers fire, when it's Armstrong, the rest of you open fire, and when it's me you'll keep beating them until we win. Got that?"

"Yes, sir!" They shouted.

"Great. Now don't lose." After that, Ed thought it was safe to say that he hated public speeches. He made a mental note to kick Mustang one hundred times over next time he got the chance.

The gigantic garage-like door cranked open. The wheels and screws that turned to keep it open creaked slightly as they silently marched outside. The snow was falling faster than when Ed had arrived in North City days ago and he scowled, securing his helmet as he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Ed's locks of gold colored hair were tied into a ponytail as opposed to his usual braid. Though soldiers were typically shaved to a nearly bald head during wartime because they were too far from shampoo for hygiene and it was a convenience for wearing helmets or a simple matter to have a more professional hairstyle, the tradition was uplifted as the battles themselves would occur in an extreme area of snowstorms and freezing temperatures. Hair was needed on the head to keep in a good amount of body heat. So, naturally, Ed took the advantage to keep his hair's long length. In fact, he preferred it this way.

He wasn't sure if the sudden goose bumps he felt running up and down his arms were due to the cold or if he felt something more. Anxiety? Excitement? Somehow it was like a mixture of both. Ed ultimately felt like he was marching to his doom.

They climbed the side of the mountain, which wasn't as difficult as it sounded like it was going to be. Briggs Fortress happened to be built more than halfway up it and there were slopes and steps especially made for the purpose of a lookout. And then there he saw them, an army in a dark uniform with protruding fur and machine guns in their hands. They seemed unaware as it was too early in the morning and if their spies were correct, they weren't even going to attack until the cloak of evening.

But somehow, something seemed off. Even though some brave Drachmans were leaning in a deep sleep on sentry duty on the sides of animal skin tents, their firearms propped against their shoulders, there seemed to be less people than Ed had expected. If he remembered correctly, a Drachman regiment would have about a little less than one thousand in their ranks. So then why did it look like there were only a couple hundred of them?

He whispered his misgivings to Mustang, who was right beside him in a crouched position and even he seemed to agree. But they were there already, and they were expected to do something about it. It was either call off the mission and not accomplish anything, or take the risk. On signal, which was the Flame Alchemist snapping a gloved left hand and causing a long range of fire to spout out towards the enemy, the snipers, including Riza Hawkeye, took aim.

Her steady M1 Garand rifle model with an extra attached scope in hand, Hawkeye shot the first round and managed to silently injure numerous Drahman soldiers. The others followed suit.

_So far, so good, _Ed thought.

On Armstrong's signal, which consisted of a punch and exploding alchemical reactions, everyone else to start open fire. Machine guns sprayed all along the edge of the mountain; surprised Drachmans bellowed frantic orders and red splattered the perfect white of the snow. Ed wanted to close his eyes, but knew that he couldn't. as he was about to give out his signal, something else occurred entirely.

Suddenly, there was a blinding flash of white light and Edward could no longer see anything for an instant. He could have sworn that he saw pieces of flying debris in the air, and felt a metal shard scrape the side of his cheek. He felt blood on the inside of his mouth as his teeth had clamped down violently on the trigger pull to his grenade and the side of his lip at the same time. Hastily, he threw the grenade over the side of the mountain before it exploded on the same side he was on and backfired.

He heard another distant explosion and more yelling and whimpers of pain. It was then that he realized that he was lying on his back, something wet and sticky trickling from his forehead to chin and staining the blanket of pale white. Ed blinked and found that he was spread-eagled deep in the snow, his handgun a meter to the right from where it was supposed to be in his holster and his helmet thrown off beside his head.

"What the heck?" The blond found that his voice was groggy and tried to sit up, but tiny specks of light danced in his vision.

There was another smaller explosion to the front of him and he saw people, snow, and weapons leap into the air as blood unmistakably erupted from an unknown source and landed with nasty splotches against the ground. Ed's eyes widened and his breathing became more rapid. This wasn't unlike anything he had ever seen before, but yet, this was some other kind of hell.

"M—Mustang!" He shouted as loud as he could when his body would finally allow him to sit up.

Ed glanced around and what he saw would be etched into his memory forever. Corpses littered the base of the mountain. The dark crimson of blood ran through cracks in the ground, a stream of the living drought of death. It was obvious to anyone who had won this battle, and it was this battle that Amestris had lost to Drachma. The mission was a failure.

"Hawkeye!" Ed called in an even higher pitch than before. "Major Armstrong!"

Someone's arm was lying next to him and Ed turned to see who it belonged to. He instantly regretted it. The unknown soldier looked like a young recruit. His auburn eyes were wide and glassy, but what really made him gasp in horror was the fact that a stray piece of sharp debris, a part of a blown off boulder, was protruding from his chest and his left arm was missing completely.

Ed backed off quickly, but rammed into another lifeless body, and then to his right, another, to his left, three piled on top of each other. The snow wasn't white anymore. It was red and black with soot from the bomb that someone instigated. He shakily stood up and briefly noticed that only about a hundred of the men were doing so, equally as horrified. Others were lying on the ground with major or minor injuries. A gun went off and a Drachman soldier that was hiding behind a couple of rocks went down with a grunt, blood gracefully spewing from the area of his heart.

The Elric whipped around to see that Hawkeye had fired the shot skillfully and miraculously with just one right arm. The other one, he noticed, was hanging limply at her side.

He heard shuffling behind him and a cry of "Retreat!" from a tenor that belonged to none other than Roy Mustang. The soldiers nodded to one another, carrying injured comrades or simply dashing away into the Fortress of Briggs. A whole mass of them started to more frantically back into the safety of their stronghold, all orders but that one aside.

Ed limped over to his superior and saw that the older man was clutching his snapping arm near the elbow. Other than a cut above his eye, he seemed fine. Mustang observed that Ed's automail leg had some debris and a bullet lodged in it and that he had a minor head injury. The found Armstrong with no major injuries, near Hawkeye who immediately stated, "It's just a dislocated shoulder, sir."

"Let's get out of here," ordered the Flame. Injured stragglers were fleeing from their direction, but just as the four began to sprint bullets showered the soles of their feet while barely missing any of them. They were out of ammunition, and Ed didn't have time to stop and shoot, so they hid behind the closest thing that they could find, was a conveniently located boulder.

"What the hell is going on, Mustang!" Ed shouted above the fire. "What happened? Why are there so many…?" But he couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence. Invisible air wedged in his throat. He started to hyperventilate. Beneath the boulder that they had just hidden themselves behind was a man, a man Ed recognized as Private Vought. His face was a sickly pasty hue and something red was seeping from beneath the large rock and his lips. He was shaking uncontrollably.

"G—Go!" Vought screamed weakly. Half of his body was being crushed and all that you could see was from his waist up, arms extended as if he was reaching for the impossible.

A temporary ceasefire was being held by the opponent, and they could only assume that it was because they were trying to reload their weapons. Mustang glanced at the Private and bowed his head, quickly turning his back on him with a distraught Armstrong and Hawkeye. But Edward stood still, his tattered clothing fluttering in the wind and the three gold stars on each of his shoulders glimmering in the fading sunlight as a snowstorm was no doubt on its way. Horror filling his gut, he clapped his hands together and pressed them against the rock, wishing against anything else that the Truth might have told him that he could perform alchemy again, if only for this one moment.

"Please, Colonel Elric, you have to go…" The soldier murmured and stared at Edward. "Damn it! Live!"

Ed trembled under the pressure. The arms that he kept outstretched onto the boulder were still there and his fingernails underneath his gloves scratched into the hardened sediment. Bullets glanced off of the structure and all around him, but he still did not move. Something hollow was ringing in his ears, his breathing growing shaky. He couldn't leave this man behind. He had to save him. He _had to_.

"Take Hawkeye!" He heard Mustang order the Strong Arm.

Then Ed listened to running crunches in the thick snow, ammo still racing to catch whomever they could. "Leave him, Ed! You'll _die _if you stay any longer! C'mon!" He had never heard Mustang shout so damn _loud_. "They'll wipe out a whole platoon! Let's get out of here!"

"No! We can't leave him behind!" Ed bellowed back in fury when he found that the raven haired adult placed a desperate grip on his shoulder.

"He's done for, Fullmetal! We have to leave! If you die, who the hell are we going to get to replace you?" He cried above the din. "Think about your brother! Think about the Rockbells!"

Ed's eyes started to burn. His insides started to tingle with intense apprehension. Mustang was right, as much as he disliked admitting, but he had made a promise to them. He said to Winry that he would come back alive. He said to Al that they would stick together, but the choice was there, right in front of him, _mocking him_. Edward urgently tried to lift the boulder, tried to tug fretfully on the vanishing man's arm. He couldn't do anything at all. He was powerless.

"Damn it, Edward! I'll carry you if I have to!"

A pitiful scream resounded in the background and Ed had a pounding desire in his chest to go after it, but then a sickening squelch followed the original sound, and whoever was calling for their father was eerily quiet. In the back of his memory he could hear the sad words of the chimera of Nina Tucker calling out for her parents and her friends.

"_Big brother?"_

He gritted his teeth, taking one last glance at Vought who again urged him to go on, and his whimpers becoming more and more pathetic as time ticked. An explosion erupted in their ears, ripping through the air; more machine guns and rifles blew their cover, hitting dead men and unleashing an unbelievable amount of severed flash and gore. Ed wanted to turn around, to turn back the clock, to save those who were unattainable.

Mustang started to drag Edward away by his arm, ammunition grazing the side of his knee as he yelped out in agony, but he left it alone and kept his subordinate close to him. Ed began to run away on his own, barely entering the entrance to their safe place. Or was it really safe? The question was answered as a grenade abruptly hit the ground a yard behind them, their feet just making it to the inside of barracks. The blast knocked them over and Mustang covered Edward's head with the inside of his elbow as they ducked for cover.

But no matter what happened, no matter how much the teenager silently appreciated his superior's gesture, nothing could erase what he had just seen, and now he had more of an understanding of war. He now truly knew what it was. He had more admiration for those who served in Ishval and his wide golden eyes glimpsed up to the scrunched up face of the Flame Alchemist as he took to protecting them both from a great deal more of harm.

"That's what it means to be a soldier, Fullmetal," Mustang muttered as they stood up and the gate closed behind them, terrified orders and incomplete sentences ringing throughout the hallways. "You have seen hell before, but I really am sorry that you had to see _this _hell."

There was silence again, but the screams and wails kept coming back to bounce off their eardrums. The two of them started to limp over to the enraged form of General Armstrong, the woman seemed partly worried for her troops' wellbeing as well as conspicuously fuming over their discord and loss.

"We're going to the infirmary," Mustang said sternly to Ed and they were off, watching others with bloody stains on their uniforms being carried on stretchers. The youngest colonel wondered if they had the same appearance with the scarlet of blood splattered across their clothing, and he soon figured out that they were. Just like the blemished purified white of the snow outside, the gloves he wore that were once white had been swathed with a crest of blood. He was tainted with death and wounds and battle, but it was too rapidly so.

He did not want to know this hell.

"So this is what it means to be a soldier, huh?" Ed whispered quietly to himself.

It meant leaving comrades behind if the situation was called for it. It meant the absolute security of a successful mission. The definition of a soldier in the books may be "a person who serves in the army with military experience or a person that serves for any cause", but nothing could compare to the reality of it all. The definition of that word could come in many forms or phrases that spewed from mouths in disorganized sentences. But the truth was, it was not just of a man or a woman that fought on the behalf of his or her nation. It was a way of life, and if you could not handle looking a dead man directly in the eyes, you were not fit for it in any way. He did commend those people that were able to perform these responsibilities before his time. They were so brave and he could only hope he would be too.

The former alchemist in Ed chuckled darkly. He had seen death before. He was forced to kill and protect himself, hurt others in order to survive. In the end it all came back to the same thing and that was the principle of Equivalent Exchange. In order to save a life, you had to destroy one or damage it in some way. But Ed could not help but wonder if a life for a life would ever be equivalent because he never thought that it would be.

Ultimately as a soldier, it was about preventing as many deaths as possible and watching out for your fellows, but all the same, the mission seemed to be just as important. But as an alchemist, he thought of war as something else entirely: construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction.


	4. Decommissioned

**AN: This is where the story starts picking up. Mysteries are revealed, but they still can't figure out the biggest secret. What will happen in the process?**

**Chapter Four:**

**Decommissioned **

"They knew our position! There's no way they could have known! It's impossible!"

Only two hours had passed since the incident at the mountain nearest to the Briggs Fortress, but still the place and people were scrambling to find a solution. The wounded were rushed to the infirmary on the third floor, schematics were hurriedly drawn out in the war room, maps folded and marked. Rashly put together platoons of sixteen soldiers were sent out to make quick retaliations to straggling Drachmans and to down any remaining groups on the other side of the mount.

"I admit that this predicament is suspicious, Mustang," General Olivier Mira Armstrong replied in a commanding tone, "The plan was close to perfect. Our spies saw exactly where the Drachmans were headed and our placement was directly over an entire regiment. That's approximately just under one thousand men! With a surprise attack, our troops could have easily taken them out."

"Do you think our spies just made a mistake?" suggested an intimidated Major General Vulcan as he used his pointer finger to slide his spectacles up his nose.

"Don't even suggest that! If they were seen, they would have been killed on the spot!"

The room, as always, was full of higher-ups in a heated discussion. But instead of the original three officers that graced the war room with their presence the previous morning, an added three more stood idly by, awaiting a safe chance to add in their own thoughts.

Major Armstrong stood behind his older sister, arms folded and emotions abnormally less enthusiastic as per usual. His blue eyes reflected those of a man lost in a horrifying memory, and Ed, who was right across from him on the opposite side of the rectangular table, could not blame him. To his right was a frustrated and clearly discontented Roy Mustang who was in the rare position of breaking his cool demeanor. To the alchemist's left was Major Miles, a dark-skinned Amestrian of Ishvallan decent with white and silvery hair tied into a spiky up-do. Like a lot of his countrymen living outside of their home, he wore a pair of round sunglasses to hide his red irises.

Mustang crossed his arms and scowled, his military composure falling completely. "We should have been receiving information from the inside, but for some reason we've come out empty handed, and now with this situation!" He glanced quickly around to the other people surrounding the table and shook his head, the undeniable feeling of frustration spreading to those nearest him. "We have dead and wounded soldiers, civilians are missing," he added, making a pointed look at Ed which the teen took as a queue to reference their chess game in his mind, "and we're caught in between. Something isn't right here. The Drachmans have us dancing in the palms of their hands."

"I think it's safe to assume that all six of us in this room know classified information," Vulcan inserted, his gaze, too, darting from face to face except to General Armstrong. "The doors are locked?" He said as he looked to Major Miles, who nodded in response. "Good."

Edward had no idea what was going on. All he knew was that directly after the disastrous events on the battlefield, he and Mustang went for a brief examination in the infirmary where they received bandages for their minor injuries. Ed had white gauze wrapped and taped onto his forehead when he found out that he had donned a slight head wound, the minimal damage on his automail swiftly repaired, and Mustang had short wrappings around his left elbow and the slender bullet wound on the side of his knee.

Head still buzzing from the freshly horrifying memory of the massacre, the blond could not stop staring at the blotched red stains on his gloves, and as an outcome, he barely recalled Mustang's aggravated sigh which soon resulted in the man forcefully removing them and throwing the pair into an adjacent trash bin as they raced through the halls to meet in the war room. Ed's mind was so ravaged, that he didn't even think about checking up on Al. He knew his brother must be worried sick.

"Fullmetal, Major Armstrong," he heard the Fuhrer blurt out tonelessly, "You two are the only other State Alchemists that know this information."

Ed's head peaked up at that. "You mean what was on that paper?"

"Yes."

If he recalled correctly, he remembered losing the chess match, whether he liked losing to that bastard or not, but it wasn't the overall outcome of the game that Ed most vividly saw in his memories, it was how the pieces shifted across the board and how the pawns disappeared, the _citizens _disappeared. The words written on that sliver of paper hidden inside the King piece were ones that were impossible to forget: _The enemy seeks the Truth_. If that was so, then to any other man, the message would sound like a code, but in reality it was not.

"The Truth," Ed said aloud without realizing it, causing heads to turn towards his direction. When he saw that there were expectant eyes on him, he decided it was fair enough to finish his train of thought. "It's something that has to do with alchemy, right? That's why you called us here."

Mustang smirked and the blond knew that he had struck gold. "Perceptive, Ed. I'll give you credit," he shrugged in a seemingly off-handed manner. He gestured to his left and nodded to the Ishvallan descendent next to him. "Major Miles, lay out the journal on the table."

Tension beginning to devour the steaming air, and Ed watched as the stoic man walked up and placed what looked like a research journal before them. He saw Mustang raise a hand and explain that the book had been retrieved from an alchemist in a town near North City only a day ago when the old gentleman discovered that someone had been trekking around his home and made an attempt to sneak into his lab. He reported it to the authorities, who then reported it to the MPs, who spread the news to the main military, which resulted in its retrieval.

Noticing that a page in the thing had been bookmarked, Ed glanced over to Mustang who reallocated his attention to the Major and asked him to read the importantly marked line.

"_The sun and moon reflect the eye but separate as two until there is only the eye's window, the crescent, and the four attached. These are thrice the greatest,_" Miles read so that all could hear, making it a point to stand as straight as possible so that they would not see his confusion with the words in the tattered book that he held open on the stand in the middle of the room with one hand. "It's coded," the Major said when he was finished. The other three in the area were keenly awaiting a response from the alchemists. It was neither their forte nor their interest.

Ed placed a hand on his chin and thought hard. It sounded as if he should know something. He remembered reading about alchemical symbols related to celestial objects, and those were the sun and the moon themselves. He squinted his golden eyes at the journal and thought deeper, reminiscing on The Promised Day and the solar eclipse. The sun and the moon together!

"Those symbols can mean a lot of things in alchemy, but I'm sure in this case the sun represents the male," he said while Mustang and the younger Armstrong nodded in agreement. "The moon is female. Together they can become what people say is god-like, but separated…"

Vulcan raised an eyebrow and suggested, "Then they're just male and female."

"Right," replied Edward. "If they're separated they're just people." He remained still and glared at the open book as if it was his worst enemy. There was something missing, something he couldn't quite recall, but he knew that it was up to him to figure it out. Mustang's specialty was flame alchemy, while Armstrong's had something to do with reshaping metals and stones, causing explosions, but they knew that this was entirely the Elric's realm. He was the only one who very few people knew of to have tampered so much with the taboo of human alchemy.

Then something clicked and one could visibly see it etched onto the teenager's face, which is why they eagerly let him continue. "The eye. An eye's window…that's the soul," he breathed out noisily and then a grin graced his features. "Body, mind, and soul. The body is the 'four attached', and the mind is the crescent moon. The 'four attached' could mean the four main elements in alchemy or symbolize a stone which refers to the body if it's said like that." He was on a roll, and they could feel it as he inched closer to an answer. "If they're put together, those are the main three parts of a human body, strictly speaking."

"But why would some third-rate bastard need to know that the body, mind, and soul were attracted to each other?" Ed exhaled, "That's pointless."

"I see," Mustang said as he cleared his throat, earning his audience's attention. "This is something to think about. We might have to involve Investigations if the problem runs any further." He turned his head toward Ed. "Fullmetal," he went on as the blond acknowledged the statement, "I know that this is off normal regulations, but we need you to conduct some research. I want you and your brother to work together. Furey and Major Armstrong will have to take care of your regiment for now."

"Okay," Ed replied blandly. He didn't particularly enjoy heeding to orders, especially ones given to him by the Flame Alchemist, but he knew that in this situation it was better not to argue. Things were going downhill far too fast and too soon. He noted that he needed to check up on Alphonse anyway. That guard in front of his room was probably long gone, deployed off somewhere because of this screw-up. He had no doubt that Al was trying to penetrate through the alchemy circle that Ed had drawn onto the door to counteract just in case his stubborn sibling made a break for it and went to follow him onto the battlefield. The older Elric was more than glad that his brother didn't come.

Mustang nodded and then said that his subordinate could leave, and so he did, calmly slipping out through the door and not bothering to listen in this time. His head was pounding with too much new information, possible theories and alchemic circles swimming throughout his thoughts. If whoever it was tried to steal a research journal with something written in it like that, Ed could only come to one conclusion, and that was Human Transmutation. If it wasn't that, then their secret project most likely encompassed something along the same lines, a living being had to be somewhere in that equation.

He felt himself move grudgingly up the steps and up from the second floor to the military dorms on the fourth and waded past automatically saluting soldiers and officers. Suddenly, he felt weary enough to collapse; his short-lived tirade on the field weighing on him like he was dragging lead on his ankles. He felt eyes boring into his back, the gauze rubbing against his scalp, and the blood loss starting to affect his sluggish movements, until, at last, he reached his door with a key in hand.

In earnest, Ed rubbed off the chalk that would cause his brother to stay locked up in the bedroom with the back of one of his bloodstained sleeve. It was almost funny to him. He hadn't noticed the blood that was splattered across his uniform. He probably should have washed off first, but their shower rooms and bathrooms were shared as one facility. His hand twisted the key into the dead bolt and the door swung open, which he immediately secured shut as he had no desire for people outside to witness what he knew would be an angry Alphonse. And boy was he right.

"You stupid brother!" Al shouted so loudly like his voice reverberated throughout the room and rang on the metal bars of the bunk beds. It was so unlike the youngest Elric to be this furious that even Edward had to wince. "What if Winry could see you now, huh? You're such an idiot, brother!"

He was standing up, far from the bunks and Ed's battered suitcase. Al's fists were shaking in ferocity and he was glaring daggers. "This is why I followed you here! You always have to go off and do something stupid!"

Ed stepped forward but stopped when his brother scowled. Instead he tried to placate him. "Al, I'm fine, really—"

"Fine? You're covered in blood!" Al shot back. "I know what happened, so don't try to hide it like you always do."

There was an awkward silence for a moment. In the back of his mind, Ed knew that Al was right. He would try to hide it if his brother did not know. As the eldest brother, he always had this natural instinct to protect his sibling, even though he was fully aware that most of the time, Al didn't even need his protection at all. Al's tone lowered and he unexpectedly returned back to the Al that he had always known.

"You always think you can blame yourself for everything and do everything on your own," he said somberly, "Remember? We said we'd stick together no matter what. Your words."

With that, Ed couldn't contain himself anymore. Even though his mind was still stuck in the recollection of tainted snow, explosions, and the brute force of war, Al somehow managed to pull him out of that even for a short while. His brother always had that ability. He could always uplift Ed's spirits, make him rethink things before he dove into them, but it was the same as showing just how strong their bond truly was. Al made him determined in a way that no one else could, though he could say that Winry was him feel strongly about his actions in a whole different way. But as far as he could tell, there was nothing like being viciously scolded by his brother.

Ed started to laugh, a short musical and rough note, but it was effective enough. "You're right, Al," he chuckled, much to the younger brother's bewilderment, "I look like a mess from the junkyard, don't I?"

"Yes but—" Al blinked.

Edward put up a hand to stop him and walked over to the bottom bunk to sit down. He sighed as he crossed his arms across his lap, wrists bumping against each other. His younger brother followed with his eyes and soon he was opposite him with his mouth slightly agape. Even if it was just him, Al found it rare for his older brother to succumb so rapidly.

Ed sighed again as he locked eyes with Al, a stern expression on his face, "Save the rest of your lecture for later." Alphonse gave him a questioning glance, but Ed disregarded it. "Like it or not, we've just been assigned research duty by Fuhrer Bastard and you're supposed to help with this crap."

"R—Research?"

"Yeah, and I'd rather not be _ordered _to do it, but it looks like someone would have to do it anyway." He pointed at his neck, "Leash, remember?" Ed narrowed his irises at his sibling and gritted his teeth, an expression that seemed to suggest anger breaking his mask. "But you're not on one. Just don't forget it. I'm only bringing you into this because I have to." Al agreed, albeit hesitantly to his brother's words.

As much as Edward wanted to avoid bringing his only other blood relative left into a such as war, an order was an order. He still hated them and he would much rather make the decisions for himself, but it was kind of difficult to refuse when the Ice Queen was breathing down your back or when a bunch of people with high authority were staring you down. But nonetheless, he told himself that he wasn't just doing it for them, he was mostly doing it because if he didn't there would always be that chance that someone else could die because of his mistakes or of his denial to do the job.

At times like this, he was reminded of Maes Hughes and the atrocious fashion in which he lost his life, slaughtered in a telephone booth by the most despicable homunculus, Envy. Even though Ed did admit that he felt a twinge of pity with the artificial human committed, the horror of Envy yelling out that he killed Hughes by transforming into his wife was almost too much to bear.

He thought of how Lan Fan, Ling's most trusted body guard, lost her arm after Ed introduced them to the idea of the homunculi. He thought of Winry Rockbell's trembling hands as she held a handgun in the face of the man that murdered her parents, Scar. He thought of Nina Tucker as the girl that he could never save, and of her father that he wished could have at least lived a moment longer so that he could knock some sense into that man. But most of all, he thought of every mistake he thought he made that most likely caused every single mishap. Ed despised himself most of all for it and he really, truthfully hoped that he could make amends. He didn't want anyone else to get hurt.

"Alright. I made you a promise," Ed murmured as Al leaned in to listen closely, "I said that we'd stick together and never give up." He breathed deeply and closed his eyelids. "Equivalent Exchange. Now you have to make me a promise, brother."

Al bobbed his head in agreement, softly replying. "Right. What is it?"

Their line of sight collided again, this time more intense than ever, a form of brotherly bond that no one but the two could possibly comprehend. Simultaneously, they brought out their right fists and bumped them like they always would when they were determined and about to make a heavy decision. Grinning, they separated and Al signaled that his brother could continue.

"Promise that you'll never follow in your older brother's footsteps."

Al laughed and smiled so widely that for an instant all you could see was a flash of white teeth. "I never would dream of it, brother."

From that second on, the two brothers began to delve deep into their research, taking advantage of the small library that the expanded fortress had. They asked numerous questions to any State Alchemist wandering around that they could find, writing hasty notes on napkins and scraps of paper when time permitted. Edward brought in the salvaged alchemy research journal and they came up with as many plausible theories as to why someone would want the information that was scribbled into it, but what they were not aware of was the fact that their teamwork wouldn't last for very long.

Alphonse, on the other hand, had other plans in mind and never said a word to his brother about them. Seeing how Ed had walked into their room on the day of the ambush, it gave him a stronger resolve to complete the task he came here for. Yes, he wanted to make sure that his sibling would stay in line, and yes he genuinely cared about his combat habits, which Ed tended to constantly dive into, but there was something else. Al still wanted to challenge the Truth, just in case the situation turned sour for his brother. If Ed could still believe in the concept of Equivalent Exchange even after all of this time without his skill of alchemy, then he could do the same.

For the sake of that equivalency and the for the sake of his brother's welfare, he would once again confront the Truth, but that would only be his trump card for now. There was something that he knew his brother needed and he was going to get it, even if Ed were to find out. But as of the situation now, he could wait a little while longer…

ooo

"This is bad, chief," Heymans Breda breathed to his superior officer, even though he was years younger than himself, "The Drachmans have just allied themselves with Creta. If we don't do something soon, Amestris is done for. They have too many people on their side. Drachma is a country that's huge enough in size."

Ed found himself stuck with the Second Lieutenant again. It was late afternoon and it was just three days after the bloodbath at Mount Heinkel. The two caught up to each other after a rushed visit with First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye in the infirmary, who recently had a painful procedure done in which one of the drafted doctors forcefully popped her dislocated shoulder back in. Mustang wasn't too happy about that.

For some reason or another, the warfront had been unusually quiet after day one, giving Ed and Al plenty of leisure time to research, not that anyone had dared to disrupt them. Plus, it only made the higher-ups all the more apprehensive. They hadn't come up with any new leads, but both brothers were sure now that whoever was trying to steal alchemic journals from unaware alchemists wanted to perform something on the human body. It was a gruesome thought, but the problem still remained that they had no idea who was carrying it out or why people were being reported as missing left and right. None of them could be sure if the two quandaries were even related in the first place.

Could that enemy be using the Drachma and Amestris war as a precious distraction in order to take research notes away while the country's security was down? Could Drachmans themselves being doing the job? Was it some unforeseen adversary from a fascist group or from a leader that was against the government policies? It was hard to be sure.

"What?" Ed whispered back fast, adrenaline suddenly building up. "What do you mean they've allied with Creta?"

Checking around for listeners, Breda whipped his head around, but was satisfied when he found none. Just to make sure, he dove into a deserted corridor and brought Ed with him, shushing the teen as they went. They backed up against a wall and both soldiers now stood side-by-side. Ed guessed that Breda simply didn't want to get caught speaking this bit of news.

The stocky man leaned his head forward slightly so that Ed could hear well. "It's just how it sounds, chief," he said in an undertone, pressing his hands to his sides. "Look, the Boss wanted you to know and _just you_. No one else can know. If this news spreads, there'll be panic." The Elric understood the "Boss's" reasoning. Mustang was great at keeping the necessary secrets; he could give credit to that.

He tilted his head to the side as if asking a question of continuity and Breda grunted an answer. "There's already trouble in the Western Sector because Drachma surrounds that area too, but with Creta involved, a part of the South Area is starting to get attacked. At this rate, the whole country could be enclosed and assaulted." He breathed out in frustration. "The Boss and the other generals agreed that they need to make a pact with Aerugo, you know, get them on our side, but the tension from when Bradley was still in power is too much of a hassle."

"What about Xing?" asked Ed softly and urgently.

Breda's hands wrung out in front of him as the discussion clearly was making him all the more bothered by the circumstances. "You see, that was our first choice. We're on good terms with them and Emperor Ling Yao. The only problem is that they're on the other side of that damned Desert Area. It'll take days just for a platoon of help to come on that new train route across the desert and what about their supplies? They can't just come here empty handed. It'll be death for them and the death of us."

Ed grinded the top and bottom layers of his teeth together, a bad habit he started to get used to in vital situations. "Can't Squinty Eyes figure something out?" He simmered back, referring to Xing's Emperor with a disrespectful nickname. "What about that rumor about the sea route from Xing to Amestris?"

"That would be great if it didn't land them in the South Area. The North is being pounded on the most and I have a feeling that we're going to need them here instead of wasting their energy in South City, but at least we contacted their ruler and maybe we'll get something out of it soon."

"So that bastard basically told you to pull me over just to tell me that we're all screwed," the blond alchemist huffed. "I could have rammed my fist in his face enough times to get him to spit that crap out on his own."

The Second Lieutenant smirked at the Elric brother's reaction, averting his downcast gaze to the profile of the teen next to him. If Breda could say so himself, it was just as expected from Edward. "Heh," he spat out nonchalantly, "You should be more respectful to the boss, Ed. He is the leader of an entire nation now, right? Give him some credit. You know being what you say he is isn't what he's all about. If he was just some charismatic dictator, we wouldn't follow him, and neither would you."

Ed glared at the man. "Like hell I would follow a bastard like—"

Just as the teen was about to finish his thought, abruptly, bright red lights flamed the metallic walls. On the floor danced the irregular circles of artificial beams and the storming boots of men smashed onto the concrete, echoing with such ferocity that it rang in their eardrums. A siren was blaring through unseen speakers, filling the air with an intense feel of desperation and hurried stress.

"What the hell's going on?" shouted Ed at the top of his lungs, his voice muffled from the earsplitting blast. Both he and Breda had clapped their hands to their ears just as the terrible screeching of the Brigg's alarm system switched on. Already, their vision could only see the red that reflected onto the floors and off of the dangling icicles on the outside ceilings. Even those began to fall with a crash as too many men ran past.

"We have to get out of here," the lower ranking officer blurted out, "it's an emergency! Get to the barracks and get your weapons! I have a feeling that we're getting out of here and into the fray!"

They nodded determinedly to each other and split off to opposite directions, Breda down the hall that the two were just speaking in and Ed around the corner to the back. He went past young recruits going towards a different path. His heart was beating fiercely against his chest, his ribcage burning with adrenaline and the blood running through his veins felt more of a curse than a blessing. Like all the times before, his brain couldn't process everything that surged around him. His only focus was the goal.

The toes of his black boots rammed into the bottom of his dorm entry, the metal clanging in response. Just as he was about to whip out his key and shove it into the keyhole, the door swung open and out Ed come the frantic outline of his younger brother, identical golden eyes darting hysterically back and forth.

"Brother! What's—" Al started, but Ed quickly stepped around him and into his back weapons locker, his Winchester rifle leaning on the rear wall of its cold metal. He checked the leather holster to see if there were still usable grenades inside and was satisfied when there were. Slinging the belt around his waist, he roughly clipped it tight and shut, grabbing his firearm and draping it over his back with the strap in a slanted position. Ed lost his Webley Revolver handgun in the failed mission, but it was replaced with another one when he brought it up to Mustang, so he tucked the weapon muzzle down into its own separate compartment. He got a hold of his standard issued black helmet and held it in his arm while making sure that he had extra ammunition. When Ed was ready, eardrums still reverberating from the noise that went off outside his room, he walked up to Al, who stood still and shocked near the entrance, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Stay here," Edward said firmly and he thought that his serious advance would work, but the expression on his brother's face said otherwise.

Ed tried to brush it off and shook his head, shoving the helmet that he was carrying in his arm on his head, blond locks secured into a ponytail while their respective choppy bangs fell to the sides of his face. The alchemist began to stomp off so that he would eventually fall into the already thinning lines of soldiers in the halls, but was just as immediately cut short when he heard the resolve in his brother's voice.

"I'm coming with you!" Al yelled above the alarm. Ed tried to protest, but the younger Elric had already run past him, making any form of objection futile. He groaned in aggravation, but had no choice but to follow his already distant brother, Al's brown leather coat reaching far ahead of him.

"AL!" Edward called after him, but the younger teen had just turned a convenient corner. "Ugh! Get over here!" He kept running to keep up the soldiers' pace, a hand gripping onto the strap that held his rifle close to his body. "Forget it! When I catch up to you, I'll beat you up myself!"

Realizing that he had already began descending to the first floor, the cold oozing out throughout the passages, he breathed out visible puffs of carbon dioxide. His hands were freezing and then he noticed that he forgot a pair of gloves.

_Damn it! That bastard threw my other ones away, _he contemplated crossly.

"Ed! I—I mean, sir!" Sergeant Major Kain Furey sprinted up behind the blond and he swiveled around, anticipating whatever orders the usually timid man had come bearing along with him. He saluted hurriedly and Ed saw the heavyset radiophones clinching onto his head. "Here," he said finally after quickly rummaging through a rather large bag that was tossed onto one of his shoulders. Furey handed him a lighter looking headset with a microphone attached to it so that he could speak. "Fuhrer Mustang's orders. He wants all leaders of a regiment or platoon to have one."

"But I thought you and Armstrong—"

Ed was cut off. "Sorry I had to be so blunt, sir, but please excuse me, we don't have enough time," Furey added instantly after he refused a higher officer from speaking his turn. "We were only ordered to take over your regiment while you and your brother did the research, but this is an emergency and your knowledge on alchemy is needed on the battlefield, sir."

The seventeen-year-old colonel nodded in understanding and asked, "What about the headset?"

Furey pointed at it and Ed got the signal that he had to put them on. An odd buzzing sound came from each side and he wasn't quite sure what to make out of it, but he could still vividly hear his surroundings, the clashing of weaponry and the stomping feet of men.

"All headsets are connected to each other sir," the Sergeant Major replied hastily, his voice quivering as the siren's blare only seemed to grow louder and louder. "You'll be connected with Majors Miles and Armstrong, Major Avro Lancaster of the third platoon, Major General Vulcan, the General, and the Fuhrer to keep communications high. The higher-ups want to take all precautions so that hopefully nothing like the other mission can happen again."

Ed saw the officer place a hand onto his right earmuff and strain to hear whatever was coming from it. Furey's eyebrows knitted together and he moved his head up and down like he was talking to someone.

"Right," he barely picked up the soldier saying. "I'll be there right away ma'am." The man stared up at Ed and shrugged, saying that General Armstrong needed his presence and said that she wanted the alchemist up at the front as soon as possible.

Edward took that signal and dashed as fast as his flesh and synthetic legs could carry him. In almost no time at all, he had reached the front of the Briggs Fortress, the same way he entered through when he came in a car full of conscripts and when he and Al had first arrived there roughly two years previously. The worst part of it was Ed couldn't help but think that it was colder now. At least he had gloves back then and Al had been a suit of armor.

"Speaking of Al," he muttered to himself as he walked up to one of the formations and found the Flame Alchemist located off to the side and observing the chaos for order, "where the hell is he?"

He was about to run off in another course before he heard the bellow of "Fullmetal!" Ed turned back on his heel and headed toward his superior, bounding ahead on his two feet at an increasingly faster pace. When he reached Mustang, the man acknowledged his headphones and made a hum of approval while he tapped his own to test them. His dark eyes scanned the horde of weapons that the teenager carried for a second and he nodded again.

"Good, you're prepared for once." At that declaration Ed growled. Nonetheless, Mustang spoke for a second time. "Most of our intelligence reports are faulty. I think someone is tampering with them," he said irritably as he crossed his arms compactly and glowered at nothing in particular. "Because of that, we've gotten ourselves in something worse than before and we got our reports too late. See that over there?" Ed replied with a 'yeah' and the Flame went on, "Those are barricades from the Drachman army. They've surrounded the fort and we didn't even realize it. Squads have already been sent in to try and infiltrate some of them, but it's a no-go. We need a larger group, which is why most of our soldiers have been called out."

"You want me to lead them?"

He nodded as a response. "You're a colonel, Ed. It would be your job. Trouble is we need you and your brother for something else. In fact, we need all State Alchemists for something else. Though it's off regulation again, Major Miles has your duty under control."

An explosion sounded in the foreground and Ed was all too aware that the battle was just about to begin. He didn't feel the same nervousness as before, but something along the lines of dread. Something in his head was telling him to turn back now, to just give up and stay away, but his own stubborn attitude wouldn't let him.

"Al's here?" Ed glanced around for his lost brother, but he couldn't seem to find him. "Where is he?"

Mustang could sense his subordinate's worry, but he couldn't blame him. The two brothers were joined at the hip. If one went someplace, then so would the other. He knew the oldest one had no intention for bringing Al to be on the battlefield, but when Mustang caught a glimpse of the younger Elric chasing after his brother, he had the solution integrated into his strategy almost on instinct.

"Al's already in a squadron with Major Armstrong. With you and I included, it will be a complete set." Ed started to oppose, but Mustang held up a pacifying gloved hand which only reminded the blond of the palm coverings he was dearly missing.

"Don't argue, Ed. He wanted to do it anyway, something about making sure his brother doesn't go off to do something stupid again," the raven haired main leered in a bleak reaction.

Ed wanted to bang his forehead on the ground repeatedly at his brother's inherent perseverance, but he could distantly pick up the spray of the machinegun in the far off expanse and was certain that there was no time left. Mustang seemed to agree, for he gestured for the teen to follow him and they sprinted off into the edge of a nearby forest. Men were obviously curious as to why their colonel and Fuhrer King had run off when they could be leading them, but the leftover high ranking officers held them off.

When the two State Alchemists entered the snow covered forest, they were instantaneously met by a synchronized yelp of "Brother!" and "Sir and Edward Elric!" Alphonse was positioned anxiously next to a muscular Major Armstrong. The two were without weapons, and Ed become conscious of the fact that he was the only well armed one of their groups, Mustang only donning a simple handgun and a pack of bullets around his middle. It wasn't hard to guess that their weapons would be alchemy, save for Ed.

"Right," Mustang addressed the Major, "have the preparations been made?"

"Yes sir," Armstrong responded dutifully, standing straight into a military pose. "The enemy's movements have been carefully calculated. A squad of them should come into a nearby clearing in minutes. The Drachmans are attempting to go with the element of surprise on our men. We need to stop them there. If we take out their surrounding emissaries, then it should weaken their core, sir. If we use the same concept as when the State Alchemists attacked as a group in Ishval… " His tenor shuddered and Mustang held up a hand as a signal to stop speaking.

"I understand, Major," he said meaningfully. He glanced at the miniature battles that were picking up outside of the forest. The ashy aroma of smoke burned their nostrils, an ironic fire that they wished they could light in the cold weather to bring warmth and comfort to the icy feeling that crept throughout the pores of their skin. "Let's get going," he suggested and he led the way stealthily though the crunch of the white blanket and the pine needles.

The path to the clearing was eerily silent. Ed saw a dead patch of grass peeking from beneath the snow and there were pebbles littering the ground below the trunks of bare trees. The air seemed to grow chillier and he shivered just as much. The fur sewn onto the cuffs, collar, and inside his standard navy uniform did nothing to alleviate his discomfort. The frigid atmosphere could still flow past his uncovered palms. He pulled the extra fabric from inside his shirt that was supposed to be used to cover a soldier's chin to nose and he pushed it up so that it did its work.

Eventually, even the solemn trek to their destination became bland. It felt like they were walking for an eternity, despite the fact that the there were signs of battle wherever they went. They could hear it. They could smell it. They could _feel _it rattling their bones. War truly was a whole and singular type of hell. Every part of the body became one with it, resonated with it and the uncertainty of death or destruction, whether one could live with the lucky longevity to tell the tale.

The entire squadron knelt behind the bushes of the clearing, finally finding the place they were searching for. Mustang made a motion that suggested that they should split up. The Flame went on his own to the left of the surroundings, while he pointed Armstrong to the right. Ed and Al were to remain together on their original spot as the Drachmans were expected to come out from their front.

A buzzing noise resounded from Ed's headset. "Fullmetal, Armstrong, do you copy?" It was the static sounding voice of the Flame.

"Got it Fuhrer Bastard," Ed breathed in reply. "What're your orders?"

The three had a short-lived conversation that involved Mustang attacking first. At the initial sight of movement from the Drachmans, he was to snap his fingers and cut off their advance with a literal line of fire. That assault would cause the winter debris on Armstrong's side to flare up so that soldiers would start to back away from there, but also become wary of the direction the fire came from. Ed would start to fire his rifle, hopefully wounding some, which would cause them to rebound and fire back in the same course while Alphonse put up a partition to block the bullets. Lastly, Armstrong would make his move and encompass the entire group with his alchemy so that they could trap and finish them off.

The thing was it would have happened that way, the Drachmans defeated by a furtive arrangement, if the soldiers hadn't somehow come prepared. How they knew, the alchemists never found out, but soon found themselves bombarded with smoke bombs. For a moment, Ed and Al were aware of something flying towards their direction behind the leafless bushes. It was something shaped like a sphere and a smoking substance spewed from it, then it hit the floor inches from their feet, blowing up and smoldering. Dust rose in twirls of clouded clumps and swirled in the air only to obscure their vision.

A few feet away, Ed could hear the sounds of struggling, punches being thrown to their unseen attackers. He assumed that no one dared to shoot a bullet, for fear of injuring their own men. The sole good purpose that came from throwing a smoke bomb was that it disabled both sides from seeing anything.

Suddenly there was a familiar _click_. Flames burst out like a hot breath from the earth to the sky, lighting up the darkening day for only but a flash. The brief fire sucked in oxygen, causing some of the smoke to dim down, but the saltpeter included in a smokescreen's ingredients reacted almost as instantaneously to the heat, making small spurts of energy burn on the ends of branches.

"What the hell, Mustang?" Ed muttered into his microphone, covering his nose further with the fabric and making sure that Alphonse covered his face too. "Great. Now we know Drachma puts too much potassium nitrate into their smoke! If we breathe this in, we could be stuck in bed for days!"

The buzzing occurred again while the two brothers latched their arms over their heads and took cover somewhere further in the back. "Do you have any better ideas, Fullmetal? It was the only way to clear the smoke fast enough!" He groaned in annoyance. "How the hell did they know we were here?"

Ed glanced at Al to make sure he was nearby, and then they both ducked when a spray of flying bullets barely missed them. They heard coughing from a horde of men, many more men than they had on their squad, and orders in a gruff iron tongue, a thick accent intact. The drone from his headphones shook once more, this time with jumbles of "What's going on?", "Fuhrer Mustang, sir!", and "We're being slaughtered!" He disliked the last exclamation the most.

The shutter of disjointed words filled his head as another order came in. "Armstrong! Surround them now while their distracted!"

The floor rumbled in response and soon the entire clearing was enclosed within a ring of pointed earth, clearly a professional alchemist's bidding. Pieces of earth shook and leaped for concise lapses. Carefully, Ed unhooked his rifle and aimed to fire, eyes squinting at any possible target. In truth, the Elric despised any form of firearm, but seeing as how he found himself stuck in a forsaken situation like this, there was no other choice. It wasn't like he aimed to kill anyway.

"Brother, what are you doing?" whispered Al from behind.

Ed pointed the muzzle of his gun at the feet of an unknown enemy soldier, but still waited to actually pull the trigger. "Following orders from that bastard for the first and last time in my life," he exhaled as a reply. "Al, don't get hit. You're not a suit of armor that bullets can ricochet off of anymore."

"I know."

The grayish-blue smoke started to billow in their area and most of it finally dispersed. Taking note that his younger sibling did not have a helmet, Ed squatted below and untied his, handing it to Al. "Take it and put it on," Ed said quietly before he positioned himself for shooting again. At first the younger brother refused, saying that Ed could need it too, but he retaliated by answering that it was irritating to have it on with a headset anyway.

"We know you're there Amestrians!" A commanding voice shouted beyond the screen. "We know what you're planning!"

Ed scowled. This was becoming more troublesome than it needed to be. First the Drachmans somehow figured out that they were speculating on a surprise attack at Mount Heinkel, but now this? How much information could have leaked out? It was more obvious than ever that someone was feeding it to them. Spies or no spies, a military base could not discover this many enemy plans. Something was up.

The muffled noises of the speakers in his communication device sounded once more, but this time there were other exploding showers of ammunition and shrapnel that accompanied it. "Mustang…!" He strained his ears to listen in as well as pay attention to his surroundings. "Get…your men…of there now! They…coming up behind you…!" A shifting clamor echoed and the background started to become fuzzy, a deafening beeping resounded and Ed gritted his teeth as he finally heard Mustang shout outside of the broadcasting, "Fullmetal! Get out of there!"

Boots were tramping on the snowfall and Ed felt his adrenaline flare up. He dive-bombed and shoved Al with him yards away from where they originally crouched. Bullet holes showered the spot they escaped, hoary shells littering the vicinity. Drachmans were behind them, cloaked in the dark brown uniform of their military units and the silver stars and stripes that indicated each rank they belonged to.

Al clapped just on time, ammo ricocheting off the transmuted and hardbound soil. His older brother shot at their feet from behind the wall and they backed away, but it wasn't enough. Not only had the squad they were supposed to attack know that they were here, another faction was on their backs, ready for anything. They were outnumbered _and _surrounded.

The soldiers backed them up until they were at gun point on both ends, Ed and Al having been forced to walk into the clearing. Ed knew that it would be too dangerous to fire his rifle, seeing as there were plenty more people around him than he could take on in his arrangement. He saw Armstrong striking the ground with full force, uplifting the earth once again, but even though he had already produced a barrier for the Drachmans to be trapped behind, they somehow kept on coming.

It was becoming a hellhole. Diving for the nearest exit between soldiers' legs, Ed and Al managed to escape the crowd on opposite sides, each throwing out their own forms of self-defense. Ed shot his primary weapon at their legs, blood spurting out in thin geysers, avoiding massive showers of machinegun debris from hitting any of his vital body parts, though he did receive a minor injury that skimmed his left shoulder blade.

Al recognized that someone was aiming at his brother, so he instinctively transmuted an alchemized divider between that man and Ed right before kicking him in the stomach. When Ed realized this, he shouted a quick "Owe you one, Al!" and shot another man that was behind the younger Elric in the thigh.

The older brother heard the electric currents of a blue transmutation. Al had performed a substantial amount of alchemy, clapping his hands together almost non-stop. Stone fists jutted out from the ground and punched men off their feet, blooming purple bruises on their faces and skin. He saw Armstrong whipping a man in the face, effectively breaking his nose with a nasty _crunch_. Mustang snapped his fingers to produce spurts of orange-yellow fire that burned most of their enemy to a factual crisp, only using his knowledge from his unwanted trip to the Gate when too many men advanced on him and he forced his gloves together to form a barrier between them.

A soldier tried to run up to Edward, but he blocked him almost immediately as he dived to make a last minute shot, shooting him in the shoulder and hissing when his own shoulder stung in a pained reaction. He could see only the battle before him. All that he could do was survive and protect those closest to him. Everything became a blur. Fists and dropkicks were flailing in midair; minuscule bangs hit the already tarnished white of the snow, staining it with crimson. People dove for cover while crossing their hands on their heads. Confusion was everywhere as regular soldiers attempted to take on the might of the renowned Amestrian State Alchemists.

It seemed like, for once in this feud, Amestris would win.

Another explosion resounded and Ed bounced on his feet when it shook the ground in a small-scale earthquake. His chin and elbows were shoved into the snow, freezing his limbs more than they needed to be. But as he gradually stood up, he realized that he had flown for a few seconds across the front to the other side of the clearing and was now near Al and the Flame.

It seemed that they were both struggling to right themselves as swiftly as they could, but Ed found out that hard way that the hand grenade that went off was just a diversion.

Just as Roy Mustang was about to click his fingers together to spout out another bout of fire, a single Drachman soldier, a sniper, aimed his firearm at him. It was apparent now with what they wanted: the leader of Amestris.

"Shit!" Ed bellowed, clearly the only one that could see it, Al turned his head in that direction and unexpectedly the event transformed into slow motion, like a reel that was broken.

"Mustang!" The eldest Elric brother yelled again and tried to push the man over. "Gah!" His eyes stung and he sunk on his knees to the flurry on the soil. The Fuhrer was a foot away from him, his gloves plummeting into the snow until they were soaked and useless. He couldn't fire a single shot now and he glowered at the red threads that made up the salamander transmutation circles on them, mocking him at his own hopelessness.

"BROTHER!"

The shot resounded in the broad moonlight, and Alphonse Elric couldn't see anything anymore. His vision blurred all too suddenly, tears threatening to spill down his cheeks. He wouldn't cry. He _couldn't _cry. He was almost a man, only a few years short. Something like this should have already been etched somewhere in the back of his mind. He knew something like this could happen when he climbed in the last coach of that train. He _knew_.This was war and that was the way it was.

_This is war._

_This is war._

There was too much. There was blood, too much of it, _everywhere_.

Laughter enclosed the area and just as fast as they came, Drachman officers encircled Edward and took him up by his shoulders, dragging him off to their side, but Mustang couldn't do anything. He was in shock. His subordinate, one of his most valuable men, had been wounded right before his eyes. Why couldn't he do anything? Why wouldn't he just pull out his handgun and end it for the very sniper that shot him?

His fingers fingered the weapon and he pulled it out to fire, but he was too late. Even just mere inches away from Mustang, they held an unconscious Ed before him, dangling his flesh and synthetic legs off of the ground. A man held a gun to the blond alchemist's head.

"Make one move," the dark haired soldier growled, "and we'll kill him for sure."

Al couldn't take it anymore. His brother's uniform was mixing with red, violet hued in places it should not be. The color was beginning to spread from the initial area of the intention which was Ed's right side and just below his ribcage. Al's expression scrunched up and the tips of his fingers began to tremble until he let out enraged outbursts.

The desperate cries from the youngest Elric came from Mustang's right. Al struggled to run forward, about to clap his hands and attempt to free his sibling, but the soldier fired and the teen stopped in his tracks, breathing fast and thoughts evolving into an unintelligible jumble. A bullet embedded itself into Ed's right foot as he gave out a startled and forcibly muffled holler, his lips and eyes sealed shut as he tried to keep it in, and right after he went unconscious again.

Without realizing it, a Drachman rammed the butt of his rifle into the back of Alphonse's head, successfully silencing him for the time being when he showed signs of bursting forward another second later.

"Alphonse!" Mustang roared as he stood up. He lurched forward, but couldn't decide whom to save first; however, the soldier that knocked the other alchemist down now held the point of his rifle to the teen's head.

"You are going to do as we say," the man said menacingly, "or both of your precious dogs of the military will die by our hands."

The Flame Alchemist scowled. "What do you want?"

"It's simple, really," his voice began to tremor with a heavy accent as he spoke. "You will give us the Fullmetal Alchemist and if you don't, well…" Both officers holding the brothers hostage shoved the ends of their guns further onto the crowns of their heads, leaving an imprint of the iron circles. "…You know what will happen."

Fuhrer King Mustang had no choice but to obey. They were ensnared in a sticky situation, held up to the neck with a rope. He could either let them take Ed barely alive, or let them murder him on the spot. Either way, he knew that when Alphonse woke up the Elric would be desperate enough to discern anything that could be a solution, no matter what it was. That actuality alone scared him the most.

"Alright," he murmured, holding up his arms in surrender, "Do what you have to."

ooo

In the infirmary, the youngest Elric went from in and out of consciousness. He could not remember much of his goings-on, but he could scarcely pick up sentences from the people all around him. People muttered in hurried tones, footsteps stuck the tiles in a more urgent way than he ever recalled. He felt warm though, but just for a short while. He was sure he was back to someplace safe…

"Damn it! What the hell are we going to do now? They've taken a State Alchemist!"

_They've taken…_ Al was thinking to himself. Who had they taken? Who exactly? Was it someone that he knew?

"Ed's gone with them! Who knows what kind of shit they're going to do to him, but I had no choice!" The familiar tenor of Roy Mustang rang in his eardrums and it was evident that the man was furious. Al mouthed the word "brother" and he was sure that just for a moment, the room where he was in had grown silent. He felt eyes on him and a gentle pair of hands that tucked a thin sheet around his sides.

"Alphonse Elric is going to want to save his brother himself," another voice echoed. Was it Major Armstrong?

Wait. Save his brother? A barrage of recent happenings clouded his memory. Men in blood red snow, a gunshot and soldiers attacking them everywhere, smoke lifting into the atmosphere and pulling fabric over his nose to keep the stench and toxic fumes away from his lungs. Running, disarray, flying limbs and explosions…And then, right there in the back of his mind's eye, his brother being taken away.

"They knew where we were, just like last time. It's too much of a coincidence now," Mustang went on as he crossed his arms, onyx eyes glaring to Al's bed stand. Major Armstrong nodded in agreement, along with Miles, and General Olivier Mira Armstrong. "Someone is giving out our reports, our movements, anything they can get their hands on."

"There's no doubt about it. Someone here is a traitor." The Fuhrer King's voice echoed throughout the room and everyone in it did not doubt him. They all felt that it was true.


	5. Behind Unyielding Frost

**AN: Sorry it's been almost a month since I last updated this story. I assure you, I **_**will **_**finish it. It's just that school has been frustratingly troublesome and in the way. I hope you enjoy this chapter. This is where A WHOLE LOT is revealed.**

**Happy reading!**

**Chapter Five: **

**Behind Unyielding Frost**

She was a female of a fairly fine stature and a young adult, possibly only in her twenties. She had the trait of silky, black curly hair, and eyes so dark that they almost seemed to reflect off the tinge of purple. She had no bangs, instead letting the strands fall off to the side of her face and pointed chin, but even though the scientist was quite a beautiful woman, her physique echoed nothing more than something cruel and exhilaratingly sinister. Any living being could sense the killing intent that her presence filled every area with; just like her Drachman superiors had trained her to be.

"Ms. Nona Patton, sir!" Another spiteful looking researcher in a stark white lab coat stopped abruptly still in front of the woman who appeared to be in charge. It was a young man, seeming to be around the same age as the other, and just like most people in Drachma, he had the usual black locks, but close cropped. He had thick eyebrows and a gaze that mirrored almost no light, with round spectacles sitting on his chunky nose.

"What do you want Lee Grant?" Nona stated hatefully. Igus Lee Grant was simply a useless man who was wasting her time, just like all the others. None of them except her seemed to know what they were doing. "Can't you see I'm busy reading through these research notes? If you distract me any further in this task, I will not hesitate to hand you over to the general, or worse, the Minister. I'm sure he would be thrilled to lock you up and have you publicly executed in line fire for holding up his plan. After all, it is like a twisted form of treason."

The man scratched the back of his head, his nervous façade suddenly burning through his previously stiff stance. "M—my apologies, sir," he mumbled, "I just have some urgent news to deliver to you from First Lieutenant Sergei Char."

Her head snapped up. The lieutenant had a message to be delivered to _her_? Excitement flooded down to her very fingertips and a heart pounding tingling sensation pumped up her spine. This was it. This was her moment of truth. Something great had to happen now that the higher ups had begun to call on them. It was no secret that Char had a very trustworthy tie to General Albatross.

Though it was a well known fact that Nona and her scientists and investigators were not formal military but merely commissioned by the government to work on this project, there was nothing greater than the honor, especially when the men of the army needed them. It was the way of Drachman people.

"Spit out your information Lee Grant," Nona scowled, masking her unorthodox glee.

Igus coughed into a fist and stood up straight again. The cold weather was starting to get to him, which was certainly odd as he had spent his whole life in this country. He silently supposed that it was probably because of all the pressure this monster of a woman was placing on them. That possibility alone made it entirely feasible.

"They have the Amestrian alchemist in custody." He noticed his supervisor sit up instantly, snapping her elbows close to her lap. An alert twinkle glimmered in her eyes. "We can now continue to the last phase in our assignment. They will interrogate him for information and while doing so we are allowed to do whatever we want with him. When we are done with him, we are to report to General Albatross directly and he will decide what to do next with him." When Nona Patton's stare became a curious one, he added, "Most likely they will have him killed within the next two weeks."

She smirked. After all, Amestrians were her worst enemies. If she could have it her way, all of them would have perished by now, but as things had it, Amestris specialized in that treacherous alchemy. She was a scientist from Drachma and she hardly believed that that faction was a _science_. It made her tongue taste like bile. Though, she admitted that alchemy had its uses, and those uses would be used directly against the alchemy capital of the world.

Her malicious grin spread further upon her jaw. In fear, the other scientist backed up. From experience, he knew all too well that whenever Nona Patton had that kind of look, things were only about to become far more interesting for whoever was on the other end. Someone was about to feel a universe of pain and suffering.

"Very well," she laughed darkly, "Amestris' Fullmetal Alchemist will die after we're done with him. Make sure to report that to the general. I want to see that dimwitted brat squirm until he screams. That foolish country will pay for destroying the soldiers at Fort Briggs. They killed my brothers, and I will kill their Hero of the People. Soon, they won't have any hope left."

Yes. This was more than just a match over revenge.

ooo

He was running and a dark shadow chased the soles of his feet. The alleyways were pitch dark, engulfing him and suffocating him until no breathless air could exit his lungs. Laughter resounded in the foreground and footsteps came eerily towards him as he tripped and fell to the concrete of the night streets. The corner bricks of buildings loomed over him, mocking him in their height and their pride of standing higher than all else. He was trapped, and the fear that glistened in the young man's eyes refused to tell otherwise.

"He's gone, isn't he?" The figure before the fallen one rebuked him. "And you can't do anything about it." The snide remark pierced directly through the terrified man's heart, and the beating somehow still pounded even though he could not take but one breath.

"All your work, all your running away and pitiful attempts at survival, but you cannot accomplish this one simple task. _You _are the failure, just the opposite of what he ever was. Trust me. You will forever bask in his silhouette, and you will never set foot beyond it. He does not see you as an equal. He does not seek to save you from anything but the flickering dolt that is yourself." The darkness laughed merrily, as if watching another suffering was all the enjoyment there was in the world.

A hand reached to the man on the cold concrete. He gratefully took it, though its skin was deathly pale and clammy. Golden irises twinkled in the open city's lamplight, and Alphonse stood to face his enemy, or rather, the enemy he never wished to obtain.

The hand shook uncontrollably, a face becoming clearer to one's sight. "Why," the figure said in a hoarse whisper as his fingers let go, "Why couldn't you do anything for me, Al? Why did you betray me? I thought you were my only little brother."

The younger Elric whimpered away from Edward. His eyes widened in horror and he shrunk farther and farther into the depths of the everlasting shadowed walls. The hard leather of his shoes clicked tremendously on the ground and he stepped back until he finally turned around and sprinted, but the weary voice of his older brother echoed ominously in the background.

"Al…why did you do this?"

His breath hitched and he wanted so desperately to scream, call out in terror, and ram himself headfirst into the end of the pathway, but the pathway never ended. His leg muscles were burning in protest, and suddenly came before him a familiar scene, one that consisted of a ravaged battlefield and Drachman soldiers. Someone lifted a sniper rifle towards him, but he could not move, and then the shot fired, but nothing hit him. Like always, his brother had protected him, but he could not do anything as they took him away…

"Brother!" Al jolted awake in bed. His head was hammering and tender, and his breathing fast. Something stung in the back of his eyelids. What was it? He did not know until a blurry someone appeared in his line of sight. It was Roy Mustang.

"Crying? Fullmetal would hate to see that," the man stated plainly, his tenor deep. "Stay calm, Alphonse. More problems would cause too much, and hell knows we need more of that."

The teen didn't bother to answer. The events from the previous day plunged into his head like an overly rushed waterfall of knowledge he did not want to know. It was almost as if he was falling through the Gate again, information painfully sifting through his thoughts in nooks and crannies he never knew he had. He hated that feeling and he never thought he would have to feel it again.

"You've been sleeping for two days now. I assume that head injury of yours was the cause," Mustang sighed, running a hand through the raven locks of hair he donned. "The Drachmans have been becoming bolder and more violent since the ambush and unfortunately Briggs is only barely holding on. The fact of Ed, on the other hand…well…" He caught the frightened reflection in the Elric's eyes before continuing onward. "He's been reported missing in action. I'm sorry. We don't have any leads."

Now that he thought about it, Al's head was wrapped tremendously in gauze. His vision was blurry, but not just because of the fact that water had accumulated at the brim of his tear ducts. He felt extremely dizzy and the world was rocking back and forth, as if teetering on a seesaw that he could not sense.

Al's hands trembled with misery. He felt he could do nothing now. "You don't know where brother is?" He asked quietly. The question was barely heard through the thrum of early morning. It was funny how such a normal, ordinary day could swiftly turn into something so horrifying.

If this was what it meant to be in the military, he couldn't agree with his own decision of sneaking in to rescue Ed more. But then again, he had failed to even do just that. His brother no longer possessed the ability to perform alchemy. Both Elrics were injured, but Al couldn't say for sure if his older sibling was still alive and kicking. At that thought, his face broke into an intense frown. But for some reason, the image of that wound, the bloodstained Amestris uniform mixing with blue to flower and turn to purple, couldn't escape his memory. Ed had been shot on a vital area. Who knows if the gunfire had hit any important organs? It was more than likely that he had not survived.

And Al hated it. He hated it more than anything else in the world.

"Dis—disappeared," he whispered. "Gone. Missing. Vanished. Left..."

"Al, you're not making any sense right now. Pull yourself together," Mustang ordered albeit on edge. The youngest Elric sounded as if the situation had finally presented itself on a silver platter and subsequently discovered it to be poisoned. It was a curse with no cure, a miserable drought of the deadly truth. He was breaking down and only one of them was aware of the fact.

Al chuckled eerily under his breath, an action absolutely and totally out of character for the brother that was almost the exact opposite of Edward. His lips twitched upward, his eyes blank with nothing but despair and a complete disregard for anything else. He was going blind with hysteria.

"Brother…there's no way," he laughed silently, "He has to be dead. They shot him. I saw it. I couldn't do anything about it. He wasn't breathing…He wasn't…"

Mustang tried to counter the comment, the young alchemist's demeanor growing alarmingly unstable. He had never thought Alphonse to be the type of person to get like this, but then again, he could hardly imagine that he had known much of him at all. "Look," he started as he attempted to place a placating hand on Al's shoulder, but the action was immediately halted as soon as the Flame heard what the blond had to say.

"I can bring him back," Al murmured chillingly. "He was my only family left. Mom…mom was gone already, but brother…brother was always there. He was always…" The shiver in his palms increased and a quiver began in his voice. "I can. I can do it. I know the components to a complete human body. I can get the ingredients on a child's allowance. I can go to the market. I can make mom proud. I can make brother proud. I'll show him. I'll show the Truth. He can't take anything this time. I have nothing left to take…"

The temperature in the infirmary room dropped noticeably, but Mustang wasn't sure whether it was due to the weather outside or those disturbing phrases that the boy couldn't seem to stop himself from saying. If there was ever a time to be scared, the man would not hesitate to admit that it would be now.

"Shut up! Listen to what you're saying, Alphonse!" Mustang's deep voice sliced the thin air like a knife through a stick of butter. He shook the younger Elric violently by the shoulders and looked him squarely in the eye, a hard stare meeting one of hopelessness. "Human transmutation isn't the answer. You should know that. What the hell are you planning to do, huh? Lose your body again? We never said your brother was _dead_! We said he was reported _missing_! Even if the chances are slim, he could still be out there! Don't give me crap like that and _think_! I know you have more of a level mind than Fullmetal! "

"Listen," Mustang persisted to the hyperventilating alchemist, "We'll break your brother out, wherever he is. Ed couldn't die that easily. He's too much of a runt. But we do know one thing, and don't forget it…" Al closed his eyes, finally reassuring himself and nodded. "The Drachmans want Ed alive for whatever reason and we'll use that to our advantage. Chances are, wherever the enemy is keeping him, they have the same hostages we're looking for."

Mustang leaned back on the stool he sat on beside Al's bed. "We just have to come up with a plan." He took a deep breath as he said it, "A dog doesn't unhook his own leash, and if it gets chewed off, even a loyal puppy would come running back and begging for a bone."

A plan was a plan. It was a gateway of possibilities to something unseen. They had to find out if Ed was dead or alive, but somehow, even if his heart was indeed still beating, Mustang could not help but have the sinking feeling that there were some situations in which death was nothing more than a blessing and he knew which situations those ones were. Yes. He knew too much.

And even those who were as far away from the hell of war as possible could feel the tension. Families would heed the loss of lost loved ones. Fires, fumes, explosions, and hatred. They would all be unleashed throughout Amestris. The peaceful slopes of Resembool would not be spared either as the sun arose behind the yellow house of the Rockbells as Winry sleepily worked on a customer's order.

A soft knock pounded on the wood of the front door while she was about to lift her wrench in order to bolt in a new screw to an automail hand in-progress. The knocking sounded more loudly this time, and Winry sighed in resignation. It turned out that she would be the one who had to answer the door this time and not Granny. She was probably sleeping anyway. It _was _barely past six in theearly morning.

Her feet, which she only bothered to cover up with soft house slippers during the time of fine daybreak, dragged themselves across the mahogany planks. Left hand still unconsciously clutched her tool, she unlatched the door and was surprised to see a commissioned officer from the military standing outside. The Rockbell girl blinked the glimmer of light shining off of her azure stare, only to see the stiff man in front of her, his eyes also the typical Amestrian blue. According to her limited military knowledge, the number of stripes on his uniform indicated that he held the rank of sergeant.

"Is this the Rockbell residence?" the man inquired formally.

"Yes it is," Winry replied quickly. Why would someone from the military come to her house? For some reason, all she could see in the back of her mind were the retreating backs of her parents, never to be seen again. Al had been missing for days now. She could take a wild guess as to where he had headed off to, and she was certain that that was wherever his big brother was. And Ed? What about him? She remembered his retreating back as he boarded that train to Briggs Fortress. He had made a promise to her to come back, but then again…

"It has to do with the Elrics, doesn't it?" The soldier nodded a 'yes' in reply and soon she was more than aware of what was impending to come. Either the answer called for good news, or bad news and she could only desperately hope for the former.

"What is it?" Winry breathed as she felt her knees begin to slightly shake and her voice falter.

"I'm sorry; Ms. Rockbell," the sergeant stated in an unnatural formality, "but Colonel Elric went M.I.A. three days ago. Substitute officers are currently in charge of his regiment temporarily. Our rescue team is doing their best to search for him and other missing troops."

Her knees buckled and she fell to the floor. The mechanic only barely registered an uncharacteristically startled cry from the military man. She stared at the floor, unable to absolutely comprehend what was going on. What had been happening anyway? For some reason, she could not bring herself to remember, but then maybe it was because she willed herself _not _to remember.

"I'm sorry…" the blonde quavered, "What did you say? That Ed is missing? That he could be gone? Al…what about Al?" Her chin shot upward and she bored a fierce gaze into the man's own expression. She had screamed the last sentence, but she didn't even realize it. Granny would surely wake up soon…

She felt like crying, no, more than that. She wanted to hide herself from the rest of the damned world. He couldn't be gone. Not Ed! He could fight! He was strong! But even though she knew she was battling with the impossible, her thoughts all wandered into the same, dark, damp, and sinful place. They were looking for him, but he was gone. Ed was gone and there was nothing she could do about it, and the worst part of it was, there was no evidence as to if he was alive or dead, nor if his younger brother was there and still living. What if they were both lost forever?

_Even if they found him_, she mused bitterly, _the Drachmans would have tortured him or maybe he just went headfirst into an explosion, like her always does. Or _did_?_

Footsteps. A groggy surprise. An old tone reprimanding some man for barging in on them. Then silence. Granny was awake. She was awake and Winry knew it. Granny was conscious to find her here, all hunched up on the dirty floorboards with nothing but an unpromising look to her eyes. How pitiful she must look, having to resort to the ground for comfort when she could not resort to anything else. It was almost as painful to attempt the action as it was to witness it.

"Why does the military take it upon themselves to intrude on private property?" She heard her grandmother utter angrily. "Why is my granddaughter in that state? Answer me you military dog!"

"Please ma'am," the soldier stated coolly, "Calm yourself."

Winry heard a slam and realized that the metal umbrella stand that stood next to the front door had been unceremoniously knocked over. Her grandmother was seething with anger, an anger she had never witnessed in her entire life. It was almost as if something had been unleashed from a caged upon the world. A beast, a furious _thing_. The woman before her was most likely not even Granny Pinako at all. She was a different person.

The old woman pointed a stiff finger towards the man. "You tell me _right now _what you meant by Ed being gone, and maybe we'll see if you get out of my house and my property without Mustang getting involved. If that man won't do anything, then I'll strip you of your pitiful rank myself!"

"Please, Ms. Rockbell. I think you are letting your anger best you."

"Best me," she spat while Winry stared wide-eyed from her position on the floorboards. "_Best _me? I'll best you! The military has interfered with this family for too long! If you're telling me and Winry that your 'rescue team is doing their best to search for him and other missing troops', then it sounds like doing your best isn't enough."

She couldn't take the noise anymore. It was too much, but it was also too little. She didn't know what she wanted to hear anymore. "Ok. Fine," the young mechanic whispered in a melancholy tone as she stood back up. The sergeant glanced over to her and her withering grandmother gave her a questioning look. "I get it. Ed is missing. Al is probably in danger. It's not like this is the first time this ever happened"—the man nodded and tried to speak, but Winry broke him off—"So just look for him."

The blonde ran her fingers through a strand of her hair, a trait she picked up only in rare and intense situations. "Find them all. I trust you," she said with finality and the two adults in a previously heated disagreement somehow ceased their animosity towards each other. Pinako closed her eyes and sighed, turning a glare to the ground and muttered something about getting breakfast ready. The soldier before the teen, on the other hand, did a very uncharacteristic thing for a military man to do: he smiled, and quite genuinely too.

"Understood ma'am," he barked firmly, clicking his heals together and saluting with the utmost posture. "Our troops will do anything in our power to discover the whereabouts of Colonel Edward Elric, and under the order of Fuhrer Roy Mustang, you and your grandmother's safety are also of top priority."

On that day, as Winry watched the man leave the yellow house she never hesitated to call home, the military had interfered within the confines of the intricate web that was her life once again. It was not the first time they had entered and left, thinking that their presence was nothing more than a mere smudge upon the horizon and not realizing that each encounter would leave more than just a mark. It was like a wound that would never heal or a scar that would never fade away. But with each meeting, her resolve only grew stronger. If all she could ever do was wait, then waiting would be exactly what she did, but this time she would do it in a place in which she was sure to receive an immediate answer.

An idea struck her abruptly as the softly streaming smoke and the sound of sizzling bacon took over her senses. This morning could be her last normal one, she noted inconspicuously, and without her grandmother noticing her actions, she crept into the back room in which all her mechanical supplies were hidden and began to choose what tools she would bring with her, but she had to complete a task before she forgot about it.

Nervous fingertips edging closer to the gadget, she dialed the number she wished to call and clutched the phone. Quietly, her ears picked up the static of the ringing and background clamor. Someone had finally answered it. A voice carried clear through and it was almost as if she was actually there, in front of that grand desk with clutter and official papers.

"Central Command," a woman said on the other line, and the anticipation in Winry's heart only managed to flutter with more intensity.

"Yes," she replied solemnly, keeping the emotion at bay for the time being. "This is Winry Rockbell. I'm a friend of Edward Elric. Please connect me to anyone in the office of the Fuhrer please." There was a ruffling and crinkling of papers and the girl knew she had won. At last, the woman asked her for the password and she stated it confidently with a murmur of "one, zero, six, two, Rebecca, Leon, forty-eight, Hawkeye." They tapped her onto the line and with a secretive smile, Winry knew she was in.

ooo

The floor was cold and that was all he knew of. His bones ached. His joints throbbed in ripples of anguishing pain. His muscles burned, but most of all, he was so sure that the side of his abdomen was being constantly tormented by the overheated flames of hell. It was a numbing type of pain, in an odd way, like he was feeling it and not at the same time. At moments, he could not know exactly how he felt; only that something was wrong and he was too much in a haze to do anything about it.

Edward could hear something. Was it a dripping sound? For some peculiar reason, the ground started to grow colder and a freezing sensation sliced through him like a knife. And soon after, his eyelids flew open, effectively releasing him from the confines of his own misery. At least, that was what he hoped would occur.

"What…" Ed mumbled to himself, "…the hell…?"

His head turned to the side on the icy, metal ground. The walls were completely gray and silver, only suggesting that they were made out of the same material. The room he was in had no windows, only a single, regular sized door off to a corner with a tiny set of bars that let in very little light. He noted that there was absolutely no furniture and that he was left unattended to save for the hastily wrapped bandages around his middle, and that he was lying spread-eagled on the base of a prison with his arms locked behind his back and without a bed.

The inside was dark and his cell was freezing. It didn't help that Ed only had pants and boots on, and it wasn't surprising that he was stripped of all weaponry. He guessed that his military coat was taken off due to the fact that it was probably soaking with blood when they detained him. He vaguely remembered being brutally shot in the side when he pushed Mustang aside, but most of it was mostly blurry. To add to that fact, the bandages that the Drachmans had placed on him were too tight. It made it hard to breathe, not that it wasn't already hard to thanks to the wound.

_They probably did that on purpose_, he mused in his head. After all, these people were his enemies and they had every right to show their contempt. It was in situations such as these that he truly longed for the freedom of being someone else.

"Damn it," he breathed. "I got myself captured. What am I supposed to do now?"

"You can get up you little dipshit, and follow me," a hateful voice replied sternly. The alchemist didn't even notice that door open. He felt something kick him on the side, exactly where he supposed red blotches of blood seeped through the wrappings and it took all he had to hold in the inward grimace he was about to fashion. "Oh, can't get up _Fullmetal_? That's too bad. It looks like I'll have to drag a half dead rat like you through the sewers and up the hallway. How about it?"

All Ed could make out was that the person before him was a man, obviously of Drachman decent so he most likely had the typical dark hair and dark eyes that came with the title. His own golden eyes were too out of focus for him to see properly, but he could feel the chains that bound his hands together clink as yet another chain hooked onto them and the prison holder stayed true to his word. Ed was dragged out of his jail cell and through the bumpy and uncomfortable hallways of the rest of the detention chambers.

Left and right were numerous confinement rooms, but he noticed that the section where he had originated from was tight with the best security. The cells in this area were not completely enclosed like his was; in fact, he could almost call them nice. There were normal cells with a wall of bars, filth infested beds and a decrepit sink. Well, at least they had a bed. Though the prisoners in the cells were chained heavily on their legs and could only move just about the space and never a foot away from the bars.

His insides squirmed when he heard the chilling sounds of people wailing and moaning in agony, but the worst part was that they were walking right in the direction of them. They escalated in height and he thought that his eardrums couldn't take it anymore. Ed's eyes widened when he even heard a woman yell out in desperation to let go of her child. The conclusion in his mind was clear. These people were sick.

When they had reached a wall with yet another metallic door, the man hulled it open and shoved him in. In that moment, Ed never had the thought that he could smell anything so sinister. If his vision was already blurry, it just got worse with the terrible stench. In fact, the last time he remembered sniffing up something so bad was when the marching mannequins stormed Central and tried to eat people alive.

"Get in there you son of a bitch. I won't tolerate any whining," the Drachman soldier said acidly. He dug his heel into Edward's shoulder blade as the teenager fell to the floor and bruised his chin in the process. Ed winced when the boot scraped against his back.

"What the heck's your problem?" Ed shouted as loudly as he possibly could. It sounded furious, that was for sure, but not quite as loud as he hoped it could be. It turned out that the throbbing from the bullet wound in his side was not helping his cause. "I'll kick your ass!"

The sole of the shoe went further into his tendons and twisted as an added effect. "I don't think you're in any position to be saying such things," his handler replied icily while his shadowy pupils wandered around the foul smelling area. "Take a look around you. What do you see?"

"Nothing, thanks to you. My face is up against the floor," he retorted.

With that retaliation, the man forcefully grabbed the end of Ed's ponytail and strained him to glimpse around the room. Though the prickling ache from the feeling of his hairs being pulled from his scalp was distracting, the alchemist knew exactly what he saw and knew exactly why is smelled so bad. He urgently wished to whomever could hear what he was thinking that he wasn't there at that very moment, looking half-animal, half-humans in the eyes as they balefully lingered in tremendous cages.

It was sick, disgusting, and awfully inhumane. Why were chimeras here, in a Drachman detention center of all places? They were imperfect experiments, yes, unlike those of his chimera acquaintances, Heinkel, Darius (Donkey Kong, he might add), Jerso, and Zampano. In fact they looked more like, and he shuddered to even suggest it, _Nina_. They were pitiful creatures with sad expressions. Visibly, some were deep in anguish. The body of whatever animal they were bound to and their human forms did not agree with each other and it was causing them a great deal of anxiety. This was more than just a war prison. It was some warped kind of laboratory.

Edward's face scrunched up. He couldn't take it anymore. "What the hell did you do? Why are there _human chimeras _here? What did you do to them! They're innocent people! They don't deserve any of this! They're human!"

His head slammed back onto the floor with full force. The bridge of his nose pounded and he was so sure that he had just cut his lip. "Why you little—" he heard the man start to say, but he never had the chance to finish his sentence, for someone else decided to interrupt them.

"Now, now, Ilyushin. I think you should be a bit more welcoming to our honored guest." It was a woman's voice, yet it was almost as horrifying as even that of the Dwarf in the Flask. It shook with authority and there was not a hint of hesitation. It was quite blatant that this woman was someone to be reckoned with. If she had power around these parts and this brainless soldier followed her orders, then she would be the one he would have to watch out for.

Unfortunately for Ed, the dimwit did follow her orders.

"Pick him up," the woman said coolly. "I want to see this Amestrian's face when I tell him exactly why he is here."

Edward was lifted up into a standing position. He admitted to himself that it was more comfortable this way, even if the bullet wound in his abdomen made him feel like fainting and the stench urged him to puke out the supper he never consumed. His hands were still locked behind his back and the extra chain that was attached to his cuffs was still being help by his prison handler.

"Alright lady. What do you want from me?" Ed spat at the Drachman whose appearance he took in. She had black, curly hair and eyes even darker than the pitch of night. She was young, barely a few years his senior and was actually kind of attractive, except for the fact that to Ed, she was the most hideous woman in the world. She may have been beautiful on the outside, but he could tell that her heart was ugly and she radiated a bleak sort of aura, one that no one could ever love. In short, she was nothing compared to Winry.

The woman smirked cruelly. "My name is Nona Patton. I'm a Drachman scientist, and, as you can see here—" Her arms moved into a wide arc as she described the scene around her, "—all of this is my work."

"_This _is all your work," Ed spat, "_You're _the one that ruined all of these people?" He scowled and raised his chin, prideful of the fact that he was over a head taller than her and pointed an accusing expression in her face as if it was with his finger. "I know you Drachmans don't practice alchemy, but that doesn't mean that you should be jerking around with it! It's dangerous! There are laws! Equivalent Exchange! Ever heard of that? You can't gain something without first giving up something else in return! What you did to these people…" He snarled at the floor. "…it's not equivalent to them at all!"

There was a pregnant silence after that. No one dared to utter one word, but it was broken, almost immediately, by Nona Patton herself. Laughter, treacherous and ominously gleeful laughter echoed off the chamber walls. It started slow and quiet, but eventually grew into something that bounced off the ceiling like the head of a drumstick would off of its instrument.

Patton chuckled in between breaths, a mocking grin plastered across her face. "You stupid boy," she said as she kept her twisted happiness swathed around her mind, "Drachma was never searching for your peoples' deplorable law of equivalency. If it causes your head to fill less with these pointless thoughts, we could merely cheat our way in, and that is exactly what we did to these people." Her arm gestured to a cage with what looked like a half-wolfhound, half-human chimera. His gaze followed it.

"For example, this man," she said conversationally and Ed felt like she was being sarcastic towards him. The scientist touched a tag that was tied onto one of the bars of the cage and inside the chimera whimpered. She read what was written on it aloud. "Chimera 2250. He was an Amestrian soldier almost a week ago and was mixed in with a wolfhound. When injected, he foams at the mouth and becomes increasingly violent."

She smiled at Edward and he glared at the woman as she continued. "So you see, it's a win, win situation. We tamper around with alchemy and get these vicious chimeras, while at the same time you lose an Amestrian man, woman, or child. Take your pick."

"You're sick," Ed said wholly with contempt. At that very moment, he despised this woman most out of all of the people he had ever known, and that was certainly a feat in and of itself. She had a vicious and insane view of the universe and if he was ever in the position to do so, he would gladly take the opportunity to knock some sense into her and make sure that she doesn't wake up from a coma for the next fifteen years…or more.

"Really," Patton replied in an eerily solemn demeanor, "I'm sick? Last time I recall, your people were the ones that blew up our soldiers behind your Briggs Fortress two years ago." Ed was about to retort, but she cut him off with a threatening smirk and snagged a dimly lighted picture that was paper clipped onto the wolfhound chimera's nametag. "You might enjoy this snapshot. Before we captured this man, he made such an awful attempt to flee and call for the Amestrian military. You see, this is the look on the faces of your people that I so quite enjoy."

Seeing how many chimeras there were was enough to push Ed off of the edge. There were more than thirty of them. But seeing the picture was enough to make his chest hurt with guilt and his memory flashback to the pained form of Nina Ticker, the little girl he could never save from a misfortune that her own father brought upon her and was so cruel. He discerned it now, those familiar olive eyes that this wolfhound had, the messy brunette coat that went halfway past those floppy ears. There was no mistaking it.

The petrified person in that photo was Pitt.

He gasped for air. The guilt and disquiet was overwhelming. He couldn't take it anymore, and suddenly the Elric became one of the people in the torture chambers that hollered for the chance to cling on for dear life. The piercing laughter filled the room again, but this time it wasn't just Nona that was laughing, his handler had joined in. They were sick, _sick _people. He couldn't say it aloud or in his head enough times to satisfy his fury.

When Ed calmed down his eyes were filled with a sorrowful shame. The laughter had ceased and the woman scientist only genuinely smiled at him, as if she was enjoying every single moment of this messed up form of entertainment.

"So I see you knew him, alchemist," she murmured seductively, glancing back and forth between Chimera 2250 and Edward. She ordered Ilyushin to chain him tighter and the man heeded to her command. Ed couldn't move a muscle and he only yearned that he could as the woman left for a moment and returned with a syringe filled a quarter upward with a transparent liquid substance.

The onyx eyed woman allowed a tiny waterfall of the liquid to squeeze out of the end of the tube and beckoned for the pathetic creature. When the chimera did not come, Ed silently commended Pitt's inner rebellion, but was startled to see that the crazed scientist had taken out a whip from her hind pocket and cracked it against the pen bars. The half-human animal did not hesitate to come out then.

"Watch and see, Amestrian vermin," she cooed with venom, "This thing you claimed to be a human will turn into nothing more than a prowling beast." Patton squinted her eyes at the clear essence in the syringe and explained rather plainly that it was a modified form of amphetamine. The drug would increase the animal's sense of being and wakefulness, in other words, cause what was once Ed's childhood rival to transform into a writhing, sniveling, conniving monster.

"A perfect killing machine," she added happily. It made Edward want to let his automail left leg make contact with her skull and ensure an intense concussion that would relieve her of her memories, but he dreaded the knowledge that he was in no position to perform such a task. "Though it does have its side effects, it's good enough to last for about a couple hours."

His arms were tied, he was injured rather seriously, and these two obviously psychopathic people were holding him back. Chimeras, once all human and separate from these mammals, were staring at them all, taking him and his captors in one by one. If they could not do anything, no one would, and Ed bitterly realized that if he could not save Pitt from a fate worse than death, than he didn't deserve to survive this encounter.

Gradually, her steady hand made its way to the edge of the bars that surrounded the chimera. Edward struggled aggressively, tugging frantically at the chains that bonded him, but to no avail. His captor gripped them tighter and shoved a fist into the bloody wound that graced his side, silencing his attempts for the time being into careful breaths and the cracked reverberations Ed made on his tongue in order to quiet the reflexive cries that threatened to escape.

The needle sank into exposed fur, the creature arching its spine as it dug into the back of its neck. Translucent fluids flowed lower and lower down the length of the tube until there was nothing left but an empty, fragile glass. Promptly, Nona pulled the object out and snickered. It was evident that she was the mad mind behind these accursed experiments and she was the one who enjoyed them the most, but even her insanity couldn't stop Ed from seeing what he witnessed next.

A moan. A moan like none other he had ever heard before ripped through the air like the ricochet from a rapid-fire machine gun. It was sharper than shrapnel itself, tearing a hole as if it could intrude into the next world. The sound escalated from the intimidated whimpers of a canine into a mixture of man and man's best friend, shrieking, bawling for the help that would never come. Claws scratched ferociously on the bottom of the cage, leaving vicious and deep cut marks. The wolfhound-Pitt snarled and growled as all traces of humanity left it for these two hours. There was nothing but pure rage in those olive eyes, nothing but a need for selfishness and the need to cleave and kill with the sweet taste of crimson blood.

Ed heaved on his chained wrists and saw wide-eyed what he wished he could undo. "STOP IT! WAIT! PITT!" he bellowed over the terrifying noise. He sensed that all the chimera wanted to do was to destroy everything it could get its claws on. But then, its reply was the most pathetic thing he had ever heard.

"Pitt…yes…maybe friend…come…save…" it blurted unhurriedly between huffs, but Edward had had enough. He directed his full attention to the abominable woman to his front and prepared for a terse exchange of verbose blows. If his fists could not serve as his weapons, then he was more than ready to concoct a formula that involved poisoned words, and tip the contents into the lips of the enemy until they squirmed and begged for mercy.

"What do you want from these people? Why did you bring me here if all you wanted to show me was your sick experiments?" He roared with such intensity that the walls seemed to shake.

"This is alchemy dear," Nona Patton purred as she tucked the syringe into the pocket of her white lab coat. "It is our little Equivalent Exchange. Your country gives us their people, and we give you our wrath for what you did to our brothers in the past. It is a fair trade of revenge, is it not?"

"STOP JERKING ME AROUND! This isn't Equivalent Exchange! What the _hell_ do you want from me?"

The growling did not seem to stop. Ed's fists were shaking so much that if the creature was in a calmer state, you could hear the chains rattling as if in a cold sweat. The other experimental chimeras whimpered in the back of their prisons, half-bears, half-wolves…they were all there, but none of them looked as equipped to murder as this one did.

"Only your assistance Fullmetal Alchemist. The ranking you don in your military is rather high and the esteem you have gained throughout your travels has gained you allies in your country and enemies in ours. Oh yes, you are infamous even outside of Amestrian borders," the woman scientist said conversationally, ignoring the wails in the background, "And your importance to the Flame holds an interesting play for ransom as well."

She extended her right hand, completely overturning the detail that Ed had both of his restrained behind him and he wouldn't have taken her hand and agreed even if his life depended on it.

"Well," the young woman questioned, dark eyes glancing at her outstretched gesture, "Do we have a deal? Will you assist in our systematic endeavors with your undoubtedly vast knowledge in the science of alchemy?"

His answer was swift and precise, straight to the point. He would show her exactly what he thought of these _experiments_. "Like hell I will!" Ed spat with a scowl.

There would be none of that while he was around. These people would _not _take advantage of him and use his talents or alchemical wit against his own nation, not to mention would he _ever think _about transmuting innocent souls into mindless beasts when they should have been happy with their mothers and fathers and children and siblings; not when they could live their lives without any sense of taboo.

"I see. Well, you don't have any other choice. It's do or die," Nona replied frigidly. It took Ed a second to realize what she was implying. He knew that they couldn't kill him, otherwise, they wouldn't have put up with the trouble of shooting him and letting him live, nor would they have brought him to this hideous laboratory in the first place. For some reason, the idea suddenly clicked in his mind. Why didn't he see it before?

"So even a refined scientist like you can stoop that low," Ed breathed back angrily. "You plan to blackmail me. It's either I do your dirty work or a chimera dies for it, right? Your labs could be the best of the best in Drachma, but you can't do anything without an alchemist. Now that's just twisted."

Patton smiled ominously and clasped her dainty hands by her front. "Indeed, You're observational skill are just as they say, _colonel_," she said while pointed her sharp chin towards Chimera 2250. "If you hope for it, we can start by killing him."

A handgun was suddenly pointed at the animal unawares. She pulled the trigger and a bullet just barely missed the warped animal's skull by mere millimeters and lodged itself into the metal wall behind it. Ed grimaced and the Drachman woman knew she had won this battle. In fact, it was won with the perfect set of cards to play. After all, was that not the game of war?

A realization snapped inside Ed's mind. He wasn't so sure if his hunch was correct, but he had to be sure so he asked if he could take a look at their compiled research notes so far to get a head start in a monotone. If he was going to be forced to work for these people for a time, he might as well make the most out of it and gather some useful information. Mustang may be an idiot, but he was trustworthy, and Ed knew that in due time, they would figure out that people were missing and break them out. He just had to bide for more.

The blond was led further past the experimental chimeras and into a hidden and empty back room that was filled to the brim with flyaway papers and with wooden tabled cluttered with book, inkwells, pens, and tattered notes with intricate transmutation circles. He had to admit that he was mildly impressed with the handiwork, but that did not stop him from seething with fury.

Ed heard Nona speak with authority to a fellow coworker whose name he gathered was Igus Lee Grant. On the other hand, Ilyushin was subsequently ordered to chain him to the chair that he would be sitting on, but only to free his left hand, keep down his right one, and bind his ankles simultaneously. They were taking precautions to that extent because they wanted to prevent him from clapping his hands together and using alchemy. The only problem was, the enemy did not know that he could not use it anymore and could not for two years, nor would he ever be able to again. He supposed he could exploit their ignorance of this piece of information to his advantage if the situation ever called upon it. It was good to make the enemy think that he could still pose a greater threat.

Nona nodded to the men and left him alone. He could do virtually nothing to escape, and Ed knew how true that was. If he had more energy or perhaps if the stupid bullet wound did not pound fiercely against his ribcage, he would make an attempt. But the fact remained that he could not.

Instead, Ed busied himself with learning what there Drachman scientists wanted and handpicked a few books. Most of them were old and falling apart, as if they had belonged to people that could not care for them properly, but then he noticed that some were written in code. They were Amestrian alchemic research journals.

Motivated, he flipped through the pages and stumbled upon writings on common knowledge on the basics of alchemy to the complexities of transmuting materials into intricate shapes or patterns, especially involving animals and combining them together, a traditional chimera without the use of a human body. He knew close to everything written here and it was evident that they were using these notes as a means to fuel their crimes. But then, Ed remembered that chess game he played with Mustang. What had he said indirectly again?

Yes. Someone was stealing alchemical research journals from alchemists all over the country and no one knew why.

"This is it. These are the bastards that are doing it," Ed murmured in comprehension as he fingered the missing alchemic research notes. This was it. This was the reason for the war, the secret behind the solid and unyielding ice. He thought he had it all figured out, that is, until his searching gaze met a familiar phrase.

"_The sun and moon reflect the eye but separate as two until there is only the eye's window, the crescent, and the four attached. These are thrice the greatest_," he read aloud. It turned out that the military's original suspicions on these sentences was correct.

Body, mind, and soul. Now he understood perfectly. They needed this information in order to make chimeras. It was essential to know the figurative components to the human body like the back of your hand if you were to conduct a transmutation such as the bonding of two very different creatures together without causing a rebound. But was there something more? He couldn't be so sure, so he kept this new information in the back of his mind.

"Wait," the Elric mumbled to himself. This had to be it. These weren't just the people that were stealing research journals, they were the reason people started to go missing! All those chimeras were Amestrians, that woman said so herself, and if those were Amestrians, then they must have some more in this building!

Missing research journals, missing Amestrian citizens, the body, mind, and soul…it all fit! And then, Ed realized, this was the conspiracy that was so sinister, even Mustang could not figure it out. This was the real backdrop behind the Drachman-Amestrian conflict. They were using their own enemies as weapons against Amestris. It was almost like the ideal vengeance.

The very idea of it made him want to be puke.

But it would be by the following morning when things turned out for the worse, and he had thought that this information alone was bad enough. They had spit Ed back into his prison cell well past midnight, and he could only guess that because of the streaming darkness from the few windows the facility acquired.

He couldn't remember exactly how it happened, just that they had somehow dragged him back. He had an inkling that those scientists might have drugged him until he could no longer create coherent sentences. He did recall, however, a sharp tingling sensation soon after he had discovered their treacherous secret. The back of his neck was sore. That had to be the spot where one of them had pricked him senseless. Plus, both of his wrists were bound again and he was pretty sure that in the midst of his weak struggling, someone had punched him squarely on the cheek, for it was tender there too.

The metal of the ground was as freezing as ever. The rumors of the frigid Drachman weather were not made to disappoint. Ed could no longer feel the tips of his fingers and his right leg was fast asleep, the left prosthetic one felt nothing as usual, but he was glad that they had decided to leave him with it still attached. Everything ached and burned unpleasantly as he turned over to nurse his swollen cheek with the chilly floor. It could serve as a makeshift ice pack for now.

Suddenly, a hasty knock resounded. There was a _click _and a creak, and a streak of dull light. Ed noticed that the single door that led to his cell was opened and closed rather abruptly. A stiff man sauntered in, pulling along a chained up prisoner in his wake and behind them was yet another man who was huge in contrast to the other two. The lesser Drachman man, the eldest Elric brother learned, was called First Lieutenant Sergei Char and the other person with clearly higher authority was formally introduced as General Albatross. For some strange reason, a shiver ran through Ed's body as that name was mentioned.

But it was this prisoner that they hauled in that really caught his attention. The resemblance was unmistakable, what with those deep gold-brown eyes and blond hair that was trimmed messily to frame the side of his face. The male was the missing Sergeant Denny Brosh in the flesh.

"_In_, you filthy Amestrian," the aide blurted in an irritated tone to his cargo. "You're useless."

Edward's stomach writhed in apprehension. It only enhanced what people already said about him in the knowledge that the Fullmetal Alchemist was undoubtedly a master at instinct and predicting the outcome of certain circumstances. What came subsequently were both an appalling shock and a blessing, for both halves of the predicament were essential to his survival, military loyalty, and the pursuit of keeping his dignity intact. In short, he basically didn't have any miniscule bit of an idea of how to react.

A harsh clinking of chains dominated the stuffy cell's surroundings and broke a silence that Ed was sure was existent since the premature hours of the morning. Char was immediately asked to leave and guard the entrance while Brosh was rudely pushed in until he fell flat on his face. The general made no noises as he walked gravely towards the site of the two fallen men, but his eyes, which the alchemist distinguished looked like the color of the sky before a brutal lightning storm, were highly amused. This instance, Ed's breathing hitched for a second.

"This man claims to know you quite fondly. I take it you worked with each other for a time?" the bulky Drachman general said in a deep and severely accented tone. "For now you scrap heaps will be cellmates, as his—" the man pointed a gruff thumb in the direction of the sergeant "—mate will be interrogated separately today."

His pupils seemed to zero in on the Elric. "As for you, my helpless little boy, I will be asking you specific, ah, _questions_, that I _know _you will be so driven to answer." Soon after that comment, Ed soon found a threatening kick to his wounded side to be less than welcomed. It took all his possible effort to suppress a feeble groan that would surely portray him as weak, and he most definitely did not want to appear that way, especially when his adversary could use it against him just like everything else.

He put on a straight face and forced himself to divulge. "What? You're gonna kick an injured man and try to get information out of him before he passes out?" Ed breathed laboriously, "That's bullshit."

Now the tip of a hard, frozen leather boot rammed into the bridge of his nose. A slight numbness riffled from the crown of his head to his nostrils and something thick and sticky dripped gradually to Ed's top lip. It wasn't difficult to figure out what had just occurred. At least part of his nose was either badly damaged or broken. Fantastic.

Albatross growled, his jet black hair and prickly beard showing as the more prominent features in his evil looking façade. "Don't you dare mock me, scum!" he shot back angrily. "Tell me you're real name, Fullmetal Alchemist and I may let your torture sessions become brief."

No matter how much this man kicked him, Ed still managed to pull off a strong-willed demeanor and he was adamant about making it seem true and not just for show. "That's some joke," he said bravely, "I thought these were _questions_." Needless to say, the Drachman did not quite find the retort as humorous as he originally thought it was. That earned the young colonel a swift head pounding into the metal floors until he was sure his forehead had a nasty flowering welt on it. Brosh stared vulnerably in the background.

"Tell me your name!"

Ed scoffed, glowering at the foot that had just done him in moments ago. His mind was reeling with ways to tick this guy off, but then again, his whole body was in no condition to take anymore random beatings from these idiots. However, his personality urged him to take the high road and keep his dignity, even if it was just for a fragment longer. "Why should I, _General Asshole_? You'd only use it against me."

No hit came this time around. Instead, a whimper from Sergeant Borsh's area reached Ed's ears. He winced, for the man had just turned his military might on him. Smart. It was a basic strategy in interrogation. If you could not get the information you wanted from the subject through direct physical pain, inflict said pain onto another medium and use it against them. The worst part of that ordeal was that it had an almost one hundred percent chance of succeeding and this was no exception.

"Hey," Ed called, "You leave him out of this! You wanted me to answer your questions, so I'll answer them however the hell I want to! Now act like the damned old lady you are and ask me whatever you want! Don't pretend to be more than third rate by getting him involved! I don't care how strong you think you are, but you're not getting anything out of me."

The tall and bulky man placed his arms behind him, walking calmly around the two blonds with a serious expression. He observed them, dark eyes wandering from face to face, and soon, a cruel smile found itself creeping onto his features. An uneasy feeling seeping into the room and Ed was suddenly unaware if the chill had to do with the temperature or the menacing excuse for a human that so easily made them susceptible to danger. It was unnerving and Ed despised it.

General Albatross chuckled ominously, a flicker of an odd and frankly disturbing amusement showing. "I see. I suppose the time has come for me to be more persuasive." He shoved a hand into his pants pocket and took out an unexpected token. Because of the result, Ed only let his irritation reveal itself.

"I'll make this place hell for you," the Drachman continued, glancing at the unknown photo for a few seconds and not bothering to show the alchemist what it was. He was biding what time he had left. The resolution would be too sweet to pass up.

Edward glared at the ground and answered determinedly, "Too late. I already went to hell and got sent back. You could say it costs a lot, or that it costs an arm and a leg."

At this reply, Albatross' grin only widened, his bristly chin squaring off into an elongate rectangle and his chapped lips cracking with a sickly mirth. It was evident to Ed just how much both this man and Nona Patton enjoyed his pain, and the pain of his fellow Amestrian people at that, but his anger flared to an even greater height when he saw what was finally thrown mere inches from his face.

A gloved hand tossed up the picture, briskly causing it to hover in the air for a moment in the frigid early morning until is landed gently onto the prison floor. This had to be a hoax. Everything about the one, singly motion was the most mocking thing Edward ever witnessed in his entire life, but when he did realize just how badly he wanted to strangle this man, all he could see was the crimson flame of hatred and irrational behavior. His emotions almost took the best of him away.

He thought seeing Pitt's picture as a chimera was the worst they could do to him. He was dead wrong, for this time, it was a photograph of Alphonse, his back turned and unaware while he walked with his hands in his pockets while wearing his brown leather coat. It must have been taken rather recently, for the background was covered in snow. One thing that Ed noticed was different was the fact that he wore a bandage around his head. He guessed it must have been received while he was knocked out for however many days in a prison hold and unaware of his injuries.

"Our spies declare this to be your younger brother," Albatross said matter-of-factly, "Don't think he will remain unharmed if you continue your tirade. Innocent lives are on the line, Fullmetal Alchemist. You _will _share your knowledge and you _will _work for us whether on your own accord or not. Patton has informed me of your consent, but as for me, I have decided to go directly to the source. After all, you and your brother are famous past your puny Amestrian borders. It might do us good to eventually rid of you both."

"You bastard," Ed breathed callously.

"In due time," he went on unfazed, "I will have you in my grasp. But I do think I will have to give you a day, for your stubbornness only fits to suit you, but just _barely_. Without waiting, your meaningless resistance would be too difficult to comprehend." Instantaneously, he kneed Ed in the stomach, and the teen really did spit out blood. The sight, it seemed, was far too entertaining to behold.

"It doesn't matter though," the foreign general breathed dissonantly, "Either way I'll still have you cornered and still begging for mercy. You will die here, and even though you resist now, soon you will be the one asking for death."

Albatross smirked forebodingly. "You'll have your way for now, Amestrian, but mark my words, I will be back and next time _I will not hesitate to break you_."

Ed could not respond as he watched that disgusting man and his retreating footsteps, a welling pit of misery engulfing him as Sergeant Denny Brosh struggled to help him sit up. For now, both men were trapped in a place they could not hope to escape on their own. They were being watched twenty-four-seven, and for some reason, they were suddenly locked up together. But neither of them knew the meaning and Ed's sense of understanding was steadily slipping away.

The barely spoke to one another, too lost in a state of dull aches and fright to say anything other than what was necessary. They assisted each other in moving unmovable legs or arms, and stayed near one another when it became too cold. It was the life they served as prisoners of war. It was a life that they had ultimately brought upon themselves, but they could not stop wishing beyond anything else that someone would come to rescue them, and Ed especially had a deep desire to save his brother and the guiltless souls transformed into hideous beasts.

After close to three hours, yet another clicking noise signified that someone was about to enter their hold. Both of them could not hide their despair when they thought it was to be that wretched general, but were so elated that it was not him that they were genuinely in pleasant terms when a Drachman woman with short, dark brown hair that was cropped at chin length stepped into the room.

Ed thought he saw a twinkle of recognition in her eyes, but he dismissed it as just a trick of the dim lighting. But nonetheless, there was something familiar about this woman.

"Your food," the private said tonelessly as she kicked the tray in, slamming the door shut in her wake.

The metal clang of the cell resounded in their eardrums, and for the first time in hours, the sergeant and the colonel shared a long, searching stare with one another. For some reason, and they could not quite figure out why, they felt a distant sense of hope. They took a peek at the sorry excuse for provisions, which consisted of two unheated bowls of tasteless chicken broth and two halves of tough bread. Brosh, being the only one who did not have his hands bound anymore, took the tray towards them and with great difficultly, Ed ate his own share nearby. For that moment, both men could be satisfied.

**AN: I'll probably have a little more time this week, so expect chapter 6 before a month has passed! (That's a good thing, right?) Hopefully the waits won't have to be as long as it was for this one. I'm so sorry!**

**Leave a review and tell me your theories on what will happen next! I'm interested! Will Al stay safe? Will his plan be revealed soon? How the heck is Ed going to get out of this one? And what's Winry planning? **


	6. The World's End in Ice

**AN: I know. I know. It's been months. Don't worry though! I will finish this! I'm still interested!**

**Vato Falman has indeed been promoted a rank to Captain. This is also confirmed by the picture he has at the end of the 2009 anime (FMA: Brotherhood) with his two children. Although this picture is not in the manga, it is still considered canon.**

**WARNING: This is a very disturbing chapter. If you cannot take unsettling imagery, then you have been informed beforehand. Many strange, upsetting psychological aspects were taken into account. I'm a bit afraid of posting this because of that. Also, please keep in mind that many prisoners of war become sadly psychologically damaged. There is a possibility of being treated, but the experience is ultimately unforgettable. Torture is no diminutive matter. My mind is probably extremely twisted to think up this anyway.**

**Some content may not be completely scientifically accurate.**

**Fire and Ice**

_Some say the world will end in fire,  
Some say in ice.  
From what I've tasted of desire  
I hold with those who favor fire.  
But if it had to perish twice,  
I think I know enough of hate  
To say that for destruction ice  
Is also great  
And would suffice._

—Robert Frost

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxXxX F U L L M E T A L XxX A L C H E M I S T XxXxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**Chapter Six: **

**The World's End in Ice**

Winry's plan was as perfect as it could get, but the only problem was that no one else seemed to agree with her. She had called Central Command in the hopes that someone, _anyone_, would pick up and believe in her cause. It was apparent to her now that it was inevitable that none of them shared their consent.

"_Please_," she breathed into the telephone, "send me anyone. I don't care who it is. I just need to get there and I need someone who can transport me."

A stern voice came from the other side of the line, shutting what sounded like stuffed drawers in the process. "Look, miss, I don't know if you've heard or not, but there's a _war _going on towards that area. If you go there now, chances are that you'll be in danger. Drachmans are ruthless and that's saying it nicely. Not to mention that our soldiers are in the heat of battle. They can't rescue every civilian that strays onto their path."

She sighed, deeply frustrated with the fact that this situation was not turning out in her favor. "Look, there's something I need to check there. This is the reason why I'm asking for someone! I don't want to get caught in a place like that alone!"

"You called Central four times yesterday. What is it that you want to do? Maybe we can help you in a different, _safer _way."

"But—"

Her arms flailed in the air, barely stopping herself from tripping over the toolbox at her feet. The wrench that Ed gave her years ago bulged in her pants pocket and the blonde was extremely tempted to somehow throw it across Amestris in hopes that it would strike the woman she was speaking to smack on the temple. This was just becoming ridiculous.

The Rockbell had been trying since yesterday morning, ever since that officer came to her home just to tell her that Edward was missing, but she had to see for herself. She wanted to go there to Fort Briggs; after all, she had been there already two years ago. What was the difference? It was dangerous then and it stayed dangerous at present. There was something about the Elric brothers that made her life dangerous anyway.

Surprisingly, a small yelp bounced off in the background. Winry strained to better hear the insignificant noise until someone entirely different cut in. She heard scuffling and arguing with a collaboration of "Hey! I'm assigned to this post!" and "These are direct orders!" In all honesty, she was baffled.

Static startled her into submission as a familiar, semi-monotone voice took over the speakers on the headset.

"…Ms. Rockbell. This is Captain Vato Falman with direct orders from Fuhrer Mustang," a man spoke calmly on the other line. It took Winry a few seconds to recognize the person and slowly imagine the silvery gray hair and thin eyes of the soldier speaking to her.

"Ah yes. I will arrive in Resembool tomorrow afternoon. Please be prepared for a journey. Your grandmother is already aware."

The mechanic was definitely confused now. She hadn't said a thing, and what the heck did he mean by "your grandmother is already aware"? A moment of silence passed quickly and the comment was affirmed yet again by the Captain.

"…W—Wait! But…!" She retorted trying desperately to receive an answer she would never get. "What's going on?"

And just as abruptly as the idea came into being, the phone was clanged back down onto the receiver with a loud, continuous _beep _resounding in her eardrums. She guessed that the only time that her questions would be fulfilled was tomorrow afternoon, whatever that time was supposed to bring with it. Frankly, the blonde was just as confused and flustered as before. There was nothing left to do besides pack for a journey in which the destination was unclear.

Though the following day came more swiftly than she expected, the Rockbell's curiosity would not be quelled until her "surprise" arrived as a package on the steps of her front door. She could not help but feel a bit of nerves. Questions swirled crazily around her forehead like fireflies avoiding capture by a jar.

As if the morning wasn't full of confusion already, a soft knocking on the home's main entryway came soon after Winry and her grandmother finished cleaning up their breakfast table and washed the dishes, placing them carefully in the plastic tub next to the sink. Granny Pinako gestured to her granddaughter to answer for their guest and she did so obediently, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

The seventeen year old mechanic gaped when she realized who was waiting outside. "Mr…Falman? What are you doing here?"

"Aha Ms. Rockbell," he said calmly as if nothing out of the ordinary was taking place at the very moment, "I've been looking for you. Please gather your things and we'll be on our way."

She shot him a disbelieving stare and subsequently stayed like that for several seconds. "'We'll be on _our way_?'" the girl commented dubiously, "On our way _where_? What's going on? Why are you here? Why did you say you were _looking for me_?"

A sudden burst of bellowing energy erupted from behind the wood of the door. A startled yelp followed by frantic barking indicated that the Rockbell family dog, Den, was once again disrupting someone innocent and off to the side, or so she assumed. Reluctantly, her gaze shifted over to the crack between the door and the wall and she spotted one of the strangest sights she had ever seen: a dark skinned grown man with dreadlocks in a ponytail who was traumatized by the dog chasing him.

"Oi, Captain," the man yelled tremendously as Den roughly successfully tripped him, "Let's get outta here fast! This mutt's getting to me! Must be sniffing out the toad in me!"

Winry blinked. "Mr. Jerso? Is that you?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the former military man shouted back, unceremoniously being defeated by her dog as it decided to finally take a pounce and fly onto his awaiting chest. "Oof. Hurry it up, will you? We got places—" Den licked his face. "—Ugh _nasty_…We got places to go, people to pound…I mean see."

Curiosity engulfed her being and she shook her head as she hurriedly whipped around, almost tripping over her short grandmother who, she might add, did not look surprised in the slightest, and sprinted up the stairs in order to pick up her tool box and duffel back of supplies. She had to admit that she had planned to head off to Fort Briggs to find those stupid Elric Brothers and get some information on the missing Ed a while ago, so her things were already set and packed. What she hadn't anticipated was the military to come sauntering up her doorstep with so much as a simple, "Please gather your things and we'll be on our way," and be offered a trip to, well, _somewhere_. Winry just didn't know exactly _where _that was yet.

By the time her feet reached the bottom of the staircase, clad in her traditional black boots, skirt and white sleeveless top, she was met with an abrupt, "Change into something good enough for snow and bring a scarf and coats," by Granny Pinako. With a startled glance, she quickly changed into a warm set of khaki pants, boots, a long button-up overcoat for winter, and a fluffy orange scarf.

She could only guess where they were headed. _North_.

"Alright," the blonde stated sternly, looking from one man to another as the chimera named Zampano, a blond man with fair skin and circular glasses that affiliated himself with Jerso and also possessed the ability to transform into half a giant boar, revealed himself behind the other two unexpected guests. "I think I get it. You're taking me to Briggs."

Instead of rejecting the very idea, Pinako Rockbell plainly said something along the lines of wishing the trio (now plus her apparently stubborn granddaughter), a safe trip and made to usher them out onto the porch. The old woman smirked, leaving Winry stunned still in her wake. Had her grandmother actually _planned _all this?

The answer came immediately afterward with the sound of a lock clicking shut and the outside's breeze tickling her cheeks.

"Crazy old woman," Jerso said to their new companion, "Right when she figured out that the kid went missing, she somehow got her calls hooked up to the _military headquarters _in _Central_ and got you a personal escort to the Fort. Mustang was basically forced to give in. Said Ed would kill him anyways."

It took a few moments to realize that all four of them were still staring and gaping at Resembool's yellow Rockbell home. More or less as if the event hadn't transpired at all, they swiveled on their heels and started their trek up the winding dirt road that led through the main town and towards the meager train station. Dazed and still quite confused out of her mind, Winry did not bother asking any more questions and followed her troop onto the next train, which miraculously was already there waiting for them. It seemed that those three had come specifically for her and _only_ her at the crack of dawn from the capitol. Because they were the only passengers, the conductor agreed to wait for them as they would just ride again anyway.

Thus began their trip to the war torn district of North City. They would have to stop at some northern town she had never heard of called Gestalt and acquire some military issued transport. Trains shouldn't go that far up. In fact, civilians really shouldn't be going that far north either. Most people living in the area had evacuated anyway, moving as close to the eastern and central portions of Amestris as possible for the time being, but needless to say that there were few resisting and still unwilling to become refugees.

Though unconventional, the automail engineer was now headed in the direction of her goal. She would find Edward Elric if no one else could, and of course, slap him upside the head with a nice shining wrench for getting himself injured, or so she heard. She just hoped he wasn't dead.

_No_, she thought confidently, _he's Ed. He couldn't be dead. _

Once they neared Gestalt, Winry was informed that the means for travel would be a military issued vehicle. There weren't many in the town they were going to anyway. The poor citizens agreed to make their home part of the supply route in the war.

Upon arrival they would head to the abandoned mine shafts near North City, in which the Rockbell had journeyed through before with Scar, Yoki, and the two chimera-human's with her now so that they could escape the clutches of the crazed Solf J. Kimblee a couple of years ago. This was more than enough reason for Jerso and Zampano to accompany her now. But Mustang was more than a logical man, he having chosen her entourage with strategic care. He had added Captain Falman into the bunch and the grey haired officer was more than anyone could ask for. His intelligence was high and minus the fact that his personality led him to be overly serious at times, the camaraderie was bearable. Plus, he had experience with working at the Briggs Fortress.

For now, everything was looking right. And as they headed off the locomotive and shivered, each one carrying their own weight and belongings, progress filled each step with purpose. Before the three men had left Central, they had asked Yoki to draw them a map of the mine shafts. He worked as a dictator in a mining town in Youswell after all (only being usurped by the Fullmetal Alchemist). They could trust him. They _had _to trust him. It was the only way to safely make it into the Fort in the middle of the frontlines without being blown up by a spray of Drachman bullets.

Reasoning in check, Winry followed the soldiers to the automobile, blatantly unaware of what was ahead of her.

ooo

"_Why did you not become mine, God!"_

"_Because you didn't believe in me."_

He woke up in a sweat, a wet, transparent sheen coating his forehead. The alchemist had had that nightmare again, in which he imagined a time back to the Promised Day. In his dream, he would see Father in his true form, a floating, inky black globule with a disturbing crimson eye; the dwarf in the flask. In front of the hovering form would be Truth, effectively reflecting a perfect white, eyeless version of the homunculus before him and they would be arguing about why Father never would own the Truth.

The Gate.

The Truth.

Humans which were never quite so human.

For some reason, all three were coming to haunt him in this forsaken hell-hole. His mind was aflame with boiling thoughts of anxiety. He did not have the smallest desire to think on it anymore. Ed supposed it was because he wanted _so badly _to reverse the damage that had been inflicted upon those poor Amestrians and Pitt. He wanted it badly enough that he might be tempted to use his alchemy to challenge the Truth again, but he also knew it was impossible and he knew it would be foolish even if he still possessed his vanquished ability.

The predicament seemed almost impractical, as the entire facility was freezing cold. But somehow the heat came, fast and furious with a toxic rage. The floor remained as hard and steel as the previous day, and even so the day before the last. His days in this prison felt like an eternity to the point where he had begun to lose count. But somehow he knew it was barely more than a week.

Edward lay still in place, wrists fastened in cuffs behind him and limbs aching so broadly that everything felt like liquid fire on ice. The effect was contradicting and that only made it worse.

The Drachmans had taken Brosh away the following morning after the first interrogation with General Albatross. And his situation had not improved in the slightest. One could argue that it had only grown progressively worse. That shoddier quality of things could only be defined in terms of dreams and horrifying nightmares. But yet, the physical abuse had lessened to the bare minimum for the past two days.

Nona Patton had not even bothered to "check up on him" for a full forty-eight hours.

He couldn't say he was grateful exactly. The abuse came in the form of a tasteless chicken broth soup and stale chuncks of bread. It was getting too repetitive for his stomach because that's all he really ate for days. He had developed a method of dragging the tray of the scarce ration of food with his foot toward him and, with no other choice, dunking his face into the cold bowl and lapping the soup up with his tongue, feeling its contents slowly slide down his sore throat.

The bread was another story entirely. Eating that came in the form of grabbing it between his knees and propping it up for a bite. The worst part of it all? He only had one meal a day. Even though these people claimed that they needed Ed alive for the time being, they sure had a funny way of showing it.

His meal had just recently come today. It was the same one as always, but the Drachmans had added a repulsive appetizer on a separate plate. The enemy soldier who had delivered it had said, "That thing came from prisoner F96's cell partner." Ed had registered that "prisoner F96" was how the facility referred to as Sergeant Denny Brosh.

"Take it as a gift from General Albatross," the man has said smugly, "and try to not have it stink up your cell." He then walked out purposefully and closed the steel entrance firmly behind his back.

As Ed heard the numerous locks click shut, his golden eyes widened at the gift left to him. Bile rose in his gullet and he shoved the plate away. On it, covered in blood and crisp with pocks of gore, was somebody's severed right arm. It must had been freshly sliced off, unbearably like when a stark red apple had been cut in two with its inner juices still flowing. The limb didn't smell quite yet, its lifeblood still dripping from its slashed veins and arteries. Though the iron smell of blood was ever present.

Ed glanced down at his tray of food, then to the _human arm _near it. He had lost his appetite even though he was always hungry. He wouldn't eat. He couldn't eat with that thing mocking him. Of course it would be a right arm. _Of course _they would choose that part of the body. He needed no reminder of his past mistakes. But to _cut off a prisoner's arm _and hand it to him literally on a silver platter? Albatross must have some sick, twisted, pleasure in torture. His logical self knew that all Drachmans could not be this way, but right now it seemed that a whole load of them enjoyed an adversary's psychological and physical damage.

"Shit," he breathed heavily with a futile attempt at hiding away his nose. If that thing was not taken out of his room soon, there would surely be a stench. "Damn these people…_damn it_."

For the rest of the night, he never ate a bite. Ed did not sleep either, his breath hitching at intervals and his nose beginning to pick up a nasty stink. He couldn't take this anymore. How long would he be forcibly fed and treated like some mindless animal in a cage? How long would they torture his mind? Forget the maiming and bloodied scratches all over his body; it was his mind that could no longer rest. Proof of that lay trickling with frozen blood before him, fingers caught forever in lifelessness.

Then, a ray of hope came in the form of a battered piece of paper hastily shoved between the bottom of the door and the floor. The Elric spotted it immediately and carefully shifted his weight towards the mysterious note, only to pick it up with his teeth, laying it on the ground and spreading it open with his chin.

The letter read:

_There's a friend for you here, but everyone else is an enemy.  
Mustang will come for you soon. __**Be ready**__ and brace yourself. The arm was only the beginning. Destroy this after you read it._

"…who?" His eyebrows knit together, forming a slight crease between them and he sighed, a strand of light hair touching his cheek. "Bastard's coming," Ed mumbled softly, "Gotta destroy this. Sure."

He wanted to smack himself in the forehead when he said it aloud. How was he going to destroy this note? There was no fire burning nearby, nor should he shred it to pieces because that would only leave evidence that there was a form of correspondence in the first place. There was only one option that would not risk the prison hold's suspicion.

"I have to swallow it," Ed murmured in exasperated realization. It took him a few seconds, but he managed to crumple the slip of paper into a ball and, uncertainly, he forced it into his jaws and chewed with a disgusted look on his face. At least this forced meal would make up for the one he missed today. Well, not really.

His confinement, absolutely _every damn thing _about it was ridiculous. The alchemist's mind reeled at every thought, every form of perilous torture he had to endure. After a few days of darkness and silence, he found himself talking just to add sound. Minute tinkering in the background, a scrape of an object, whispers in the hallways…his ears picked them all up and reflex caused him to shift towards the source. Was he going insane?

His body ached; the severely healing bullet wound on his side that Ed was sure was becoming infected because the bandages hadn't been changed for days throbbed into his ribs. But nothing ached more than the pain of not being in control.

Edward was trapped, a man in a cage that wasn't being treated like a man. He couldn't save the humans-turned-chimeras, nor could he make sure his brother was safe from whoever was spying in Fort Briggs, nor could he break out of the Drachman detention center. The eldest Elric was alone, and for now, he would remain that way until this supposed help came, if it ever even did., but he wanted the flavor of escape. The musty aftertaste of paper on his tongue proved that notion.

"_You think stealing something powerful makes you a great man?"_

"_You're nothing but a cunning thief. You should've stayed in the flask where you belong."_

Ed was being dragged again. Why must he always be dragged? He wasn't that helpless, was he? But perhaps that was not the right question to ask. Let us try, "He wasn't some monster, was he?" The answer seemed to be heading more in the direction of, "Why Edward, of course you're some monster." Proof included those hateful and abhorrent expressions he was getting, practically from every cell corner. Drachman soldiers appeared to be everywhere and in multiple places at once, their deep, muddy uniforms gleaming in muted brightness. His eyes could barely adjust.

The repellent odor of vile filth and vomit filled the Elric's nostrils; scenes of hopeless and pupil-less stares followed him; horror-struck screams of agony echoed, and the unmistakable wails of innocent _children _penetrated the space like a spear protruding from a pound of hunted prey. The sad thing was he was used to it by now. It had been almost two weeks since he was captured, and yet, no one had come to save him.

The Fullmetal Alchemist was never one to rely too much on others. He would distinctly do things on his own, fight on his own, eat on his own, earn on his own. Most of the time, other people would have the tendency to rely on _him_. It was rare for the situation to be the other way around. So then why was it like this now?

_Because_, he thought bitterly, _I can't do anything now. They've got Al dangling in my face too._

Maybe Mustang hadn't discovered the whereabouts of the hold yet? Maybe Briggs Fortress was being bombarded with too many attacks to care about things like missing officers? But maybe, _maybe_ they all just thought he was dead. Right now anyway, Ed felt deader than he ever felt. Perchance the only moment in time that could fight for the spot was the memory of when he and his brother preformed the accursed act of Human Transmutation on their deceased mother in hopes of resurrecting the lifeless.

His head was pounding by the time the metal entrance screeched open and he was forcibly kicked in with a, "Get in there, soiled Amestrian parasite!" The officer pulling him in the laboratory section of the building spit in Ed's eyes. From the get-go, it seemed, this day would be worse than they usually were for the alchemist recently. Unpleasant emotions welled up in his stomach.

They finally decided to bring him to this terrible place again and _she _was inevitably there with him. Her white lab coat trailed behind her like a veil and her black stare was overtly ice cold.

"Ah, the little blond alchemist," Nona Patton said. Her lips, which seemed more crimson and maliciously beautiful than usual, glistened as she licked them. "I've been awaiting your arrival. Now how could you keep a young woman waiting? My curiosity with you appears to never fail me." She smirked with venom, "Are you here to entertain me today?"

Edward tried to hold back his scowl at being called little. "_You_. What do you want this time? I'm not here to do the dirty work of a second class murderer."

At that sentiment, Patton walked eerily in the direction of her captive, waving off the soldier that had taken him in as his hands were still tightly bound. This time though, a metal cuff was wrapped around his flesh leg with a fairly large metal ball attached to it at the end of a chain. Apparently, Ed had been stubborn enough to make an attempt at escape a couple of days ago. They were tempted to unlatch his automail leg.

The woman strode up to him, a mysterious smile gracing her features and she placed a dainty hand on his cheek. He glowered in retaliation as she did so, but the gentleness only grew worse. Next came her fingers tracing his neck and entangling in his bangs and locks of honey-hued hair, having lost its ponytail over the course of his stay. She brushed her lips against his, as if suggesting a kiss that neither of them wanted, but taunting at the same time, but he dared not waver, only deepen his reserve and frown line.

She was mocking him, teasing him, seducing him. The nerve, the utter nauseating _nerve_ of his woman never ceased to amaze Ed. And then she placed her other hand on his chest, adding slight pressure there, then she moved her lips to his ear and whispered, "We have an audience today," and a sudden, sharp pain erupted near his right shoulder. She had pricked him unexpectedly with a syringe and it was gradually filling with the red of his blood.

He tried to shove her away. "What the hell?"

"Oh it's only an innocent sample after all," Nona Patton replied with a malicious cheeriness, "It's nothing quite so troublesome to get worked up over. I'll just inject your blood into one of our friends here—" she gestured around to the animal cages, "—and see if we can _enhance _their alchemical stability."

"What the hell are you trying to do," he called heatedly, "Transmute my blood into a weapon that's part…" His golden eyes widened in horror. "…You _ARE _aren't you? You're using blood to make into iron weapons! Some cheap supplies huh? And you're giving it to the chimeras!"

The Drachman woman only smiled as he continued. "You could kill those people! Metal in a person's body don't usually mix! Automail, bone reinforcements, those are different, but _this_?"

The woman scientist only ignored his pleas and a back door creaked wide open, revealing a thin and starved, brunette woman with chocolate brown eyes. From an angle, Ed could have sworn she was his mother, but he knew better, and the thought only made his position less bearable.

"This is our audience," Patton smoothly stated, a tremor of a sick hidden excitement evident in her voice, "and of course, the audience of the audience." Soon afterward, a little boy of about eight appeared behind the woman, whimpering to his parent and with identical eyes brimming with tears and fear.

Their clothes were ragged, torn in places and burned to a crisp in others. But only on the mother's, Ed noticed, was there no absence of flowering blood. Something wrenched in his gut. If these people were here in the same room as the Fullmetal Alchemist, Hero of the (not Drachman) People, they were surely to be in grave danger, and it all boiled down to him.

When the mother was tied tightly onto a wooden chair with thick stripes of rope, and the child was chained to the chair's armrest nearby, Patton turned to face Ed. She sneered and said, "To answer your previous question, Amestrian alchemist, I never said that the iron blood would be the weapons for our chimeras," her disturbing countenance deepened, "but they _will_ be for our army and, if transmuted properly, can be used to reinforce parts of a chimera's body, making them more formidable opponents to your weakling military."

Ed glared in reply. There was really nothing he could say to that. He had learned, astonishingly enough, that there were times in this prison hold that he should never speak his mind.

The child shrank next to his mother, gripping her hand for dear life and the man who walked him in who Ed recognized as the same one who hauled him pitifully from his lonely cell to the laboratory was clenching onto a machine gun professionally in both palms.

"Igus," the Drachman woman called seriously to another man who was her lab assistant, not bothering to face any place other than the terrified eyes of her victims, and the young male with glaring round spectacles and close cropped hair obediently walked next to his companion. From where, Edward did not know.

"Prepare the participants for the experiment," she went on, pointing to the mother and child.

The dark haired man did his job well and thoroughly. He checked the bodies of the two humans, spying the clothes with disproving acceptance, and frequently would pause to rub his thumb and index finger on pieces of the fabric, his glasses flickering oddly in the weak light. Suddenly, he grasped the upper arm of the woman as she gasped out loudly enough to echo and he grinned eerily, shifting his gaze towards the syringe full of blood.

"Keep her arm still. If I don't transmute the blood quickly, she will die from the mixture of two different blood types and blood clotting." The wicked scientist smiled. "I suppose that would be rather amusing to watch, however."

Ed tried to protest, reaching out to wring the woman around her neck before she would even lay a finger on the Amestrian, but, without noticing it, a guard had subdued his advances and effectively dropped him to the ground whilst holding back his head by Ed's blond loose strands of hair. His weakness from eating meager amounts of food and the abuse that the prison system had given him caused the Fullmetal Alchemist to fall in such a way that he would never have done beforehand. It was humiliating and it left a disgusting taste on his tongue. And so he was forced to watch with his head held high and his arms bound with taught rope, while a metal ball attached to his left leg held him back from escape.

The man called Igus held the prisoner of war down in her chair, checking the ropes that secured her.

"Good enough, Lee Grant," the Patton woman breathed. "Inject the subject with the syringe. Quickly."

The elder Elric brother was stunned. What were these people thinking? Injecting a different type of blood into somebody else's bloodstream? He may not be a physician, but hanging around Winry made him more aware of medical issues. He knew that if you did not know the blood type going into someone for a transfusion, the results should best stay undecided. If two types of blood clashed, a type A and B for example, the antibodies of the recipient would try and fight off the intruding substance and ultimately end in a swift, yet painful death.

Knowing this, his fruitless struggle intensified and his reply to the situation was met with an outward kick to the temple, which made Ed's vision blurry.

"Hurry up! Get out of the way so I can make the transmutation. We need to do this quickly or the woman might die. I need this Amestrian pest to see the results so that we may be able to _utilize _his alchemic knowledge."

Ed hadn't noticed that his own lifeblood was nastily squeezed into the upper arm of the hostage until it was too late. For a moment, he was more than sickened. Then, promptly, there came a flash of movement and he realized that the little boy was fighting to untie his mother. Tears flowed down the child's face while his hands were grasping his parent's constraints for dear life, and the bulky guard attempted to reprimand the naive boy. There was a loud _bang _and a small spurt of red shot into the air while a simultaneous female's frantic scream sliced with passion. The guard had shot her child in the calf and he was writhing in agony on the ground, clutching his injury to his chest.

The Amestrian mother gasped for air, a look of pure grief and absolute hated marred the features that were similar Ed's own mother. A pang of guilt hit him next.

"Please," she begged, an edge of determination in her tone, "_please _don't hurt him. Leave him alone."At that statement, Ed wheezed a "You bastards! Let them go!" before earning a sharp shove to the small of his back. He was still hopelessly trapped.

Just as one of the three torturers were about to respond, they were met with a fierce intake of breath from the very woman who tried to talk back to them. Her face was suddenly pale and sweaty; her fingers that were bound were shaking and quivering in anxiety. In the background, Nona Patton simply chuckled with delight saying, "You idiot boy," while nudging her foot into the fallen child's cheek as if trying to avoid stepping into a sordid cesspool, "Your actions have been the literal death of your precious mother."

"C—Can't…breathe…" The woman was talking to no one but herself now. "Will…William…get out…" A glazed look replaced her previous begging one. "…go back home…go back to Liore."

"Hah," Patton laughed, "The result of not transmuting the separate blood fast enough. She has a serious immunological reaction called a Rhesus crisis. She'll succumb to full cardiac arrest within minutes. The blood is clashing. Blood clots are forming in her veins. Nevertheless," the beautiful and cruel scientist smiled, "it will be an excruciatingly painful and immediate death."

Ed shut his eyes tightly when the spine-chilling shrieks began. He turned his head away, not wanting to see the expression on the little boy's face as he watched his mother die before him. He gritted his teeth as he imagined the female squirming in her seat as her body responded to the lack of oxygen caused by her own antibodies fighting for survival. An abrupt hitch of breath and it was all over. When Ed heard the chair topple over, he dared to gaze at Trisha Elric's lookalike who had fallen to the floor in a heap.

Seconds passed and all the blond could see was her face, blank and cold like the Briggs Mountains, chocolate brown pupils staring into nothing, and the woman's incessantly sobbing son as he yelled for her to come back and hear him and because of the horrific throbbing in his wounded calf.

He couldn't stop staring. He couldn't, not when she looked just like _her _lying on the flooring, _her _lifeless and frozen and _dead_.

"No," he murmured, shivering with stark remembrance, "mom…I didn't mean to!" But none of them heard him and in minutes, as Ed was stuck dwelling in a past he had no desire of recalling, Patton had drawn out an extra syringe, not bothering to walk all the way to the Elric's side of the room and instead drew blood from the guard, who gave in without complaint.

"That corpse's blood is useless to me now," she said. "It would have already separated into plasma and cells, making it ineffective."

Her comment did not stop the man from grunting as the needle drove through his flesh, a dark crimson liquid rising slowly in the glass tube. She turned to loom over the whimpering young child and smirked saying, "Now, now, _Will, _your mother would be so _proud _of you. Staying alive in a Drachman hold this long should prove your worth enough."

The little boy shrunk more deeply into himself, shying away with wet streams still flowing like rivers of never-ending sorrow that only moved where the current took them. Ed began to think morbidly of tributaries in the craggy mountains, mountains, he somehow knew, this boy would never want to see again.

"Not that you're worthy enough for me," Patton's voice added as a silky afterthought. "It's so much fun, really, to add someone else's blood into another's. It is much more intriguing than using that person's own, much more _satisfying _to know that that donor will have to suffer too if he is not careful, for the blood that mixes can be a tool for murder."

The chuckles came. "Oh how satisfying indeed."

Seconds went by as Ed was motionless and partially ensnared in his personal nightmare. The unseeing eyes of the dead mother seemed to bore into his soul, Drachma was colder than ever, Nona Patton was the adversary he could not gather himself up to defeat, the life of his little brother, Alphonse was on the line, his nation was in danger, Pitt was a snarling creature crouching in the back of a forsaken cage, and he was being forced to watch an innocent child being transmuted into part living weapon.

Where was the Truth now when he, _hell_, where was the Truth when he needed to see what was behind the Gate the most?

A flicker of bright blue light charged the room like a miniature storm of electricity whilst accompanied by a shuddering yell. The deed was done and Edward found himself, once again, helpless and he hated himself more than he could ever have previously imagined. The boy was now clutching his right forearm which now had a sinister transmutation circle engraved with a knife into his skin, a strange bulging object forming on its bone. His fingertips twitched as his body registered a foreign object within.

"Adrik," Patton pointed a thumb in the guard's direction. "Shoot it," she said and then pointed at the throbbing bone. "We need to test the iron I have alchemized on his bone."

A sickening thud hit and Ed looked up to see a purpling bruise blossoming on the little boy's arm. There was no blood. There was no open wound save for his shot calf. As crude and evil the transmutation was to turn another person's blood into iron before the two sources mixed, the experiment was a success in a way. The alchemist was repulsed by the very idea.

"Good," he heard Nona state calmly. "Finish it."

Then more gunshots rang in the air, consecutively striking one by one. Blameless, pure, childish, crying, saddened, lost, confused, the barely eight year old boy jerked and flayed like a sack of sand responding to a tremendous earthquake. Spurt after spurt of scarlet, flayed upwards as a whip would; only splashing back down when gravity decided to make its devastating pull.

The hands of the dark dragged him now, deep into a pit of nothingness until he met his mother once again, but way too soon. He could have lived a great life, a _full _life. He would never make the same mistake he and Alphonse had made when they were eleven and ten years old, Ed figured. Alchemy would appear too cruel a tool to bring back the beautiful deceased.

They were both gone now: the boy and his mother. They were gone and both of them were not coming back, and he had assisted. _Edward _had helped.

_Damn it! _He quivered in his thoughts.

That was his blood that caused the mother to leave her boy behind. He had murdered. He had killed. And then what had happened next but the boy had to interfere! The world was crashing before his very eyes and Ed found himself grasping his hands forward as if the answer would be anywhere else but there.

"Now, Fullmetal Alchemist, I ask for your specialty," the Drachman scientist sneered, "Of course you know very well what I mean. Human transmutation. Bring these miserable fools back to life. With your power, Drachma will rule this war."

That was all the teenager needed to hear. They had found it, his bottomless, hopeless, horrendous, and unsolvable weakness. Maybe, just maybe, that weakness was enough to start breaking him apart into the insignificant pieces they believed him to be. A stronghold of an emotional fort, true, that was what everyone believe their hero to be. But you see, unlike everyone else, Ed knew that he was no more than a human being.

His hysterical laughter started slowly, then picked up the pace, bouncing with increasing volume from the ceilings of the facility. Ed's grin was a gruesome one and he could hardly consider how he was acting, but he couldn't hold back for some reason. His actions began to think for themselves.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?" The young colonel bellowed when he was finally composed enough. He hadn't noticed that he was on his knees, his hands grasping his head as if trying to block out all forms of sound. He did not want to hear anything. Nothing. Nothing at all. Damn it all. Damn it all to hell. They were breaking him, and abruptly, he comprehended, they were succeeding.

_Please, please, please, please, please! _His mind screamed on top of its proverbial lungs. His eyes were wide with terror, pupils rapidly constricting, and his breath came in disjointed hitches and heaves. The enemy was laughing as he trembled, stooped pathetically on the floor, _laughing_, and he could do nothing to prevent them from getting into his psyche.

"Their humanity is dead! Just kill them, alchemist!" Igus Lee Grant contributed now, shifting the attention to the moaning human-chimeras in the background.

"Kill them all!"

"Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!"

"Wake them up, Amestrian! Wake up those people that are not longer alive!"

"What are you doing, pathetic slime? Use your alchemy!"

But Ed knew that even if he still had his alchemy, he would never use it here, not like this anyway. For the first time in his life, he wished he had never become an alchemist. Maybe if he hadn't, they would not be in this war. Maybe if he had never done so, these people would be living lives that were not ruined by the atrocious desires of power and a lust for victory, or greed, of strength over those who were lesser than oneself.

So he no longer struggled as they hauled him along with his attached chains to an unfamiliar place.

They had brought him to an unfamiliar cell, one with two occupants with metallic wristbands labeled **F96 **and **F07**. An annoying dripping sound could be heard quite clearly, like a drain had to be fixed or something. Ed was too dazed to be sure. At that very moment, his mind could not bear to wander for fear of tapping into his previous and recent experience.

Agitated sighs and split remnants of crazed laughter somehow blended in. Through that observation, anyone could realize that one of the prisoners was strapped down rather coarsely on a standing panel of cherry wood table, a strange device filled with liquid water (though how it remained that way in the freezing prison was a mystery), was hanging from the ceiling and carefully dripping drops of water onto the recipient's awaiting forehead.

"Xingese Water Torture," somebody muttered with dumbfounded astonishment, but it wasn't the phrase that Ed was necessarily paying attention to. In fact, it was the tormented reactions of his companion, Sergeant Denny Brosh, which caught him off guard. He had a band that read **F96 **on it. The man strapped down and being tortured was _him_.

"Enjoying the show, Fullmetal?" An eerie tenor that Ed had felt he should never hear again came at him just then, piercing the short-lived silence. General Alik Albatross walked up out of the darkness, and save for the two other occupants of the cell, they were virtually alone.

"Your friend here has been enduring a rather unique form of treatment the past few hours," he said with a disinterested smile. It made the blond sick inside.

Ed stood his ground, trying to look determined and not as shaken up as he really felt he was, staring his golden gaze into the stormy gray of his captor. "Bastard," he tried out with a hesitant confidence. This form of halfhearted rebellion earned him a slap on the face, leaving a stinging sensation there for minutes to come.

The General snarled. "You dare speak to me that way. Know your place!"

"What," Ed blurted out with a forced façade of composure, "_what _do you want from me?"

The dripping and groaning from Brosh was starting to get to him. He couldn't bear the sounds for long. They needed to get out of there fast; otherwise both companions were doomed. But how? _How? _There was no escape as far as he could see. He could not see, not for days. Light was a thing of the past now. The Elric could not remember how the sun's rays felt on his skin anymore, and his friend was losing his mind.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip and drip of water. It was no wonder that that noise and sensation could make you feel insane.

"What is your true name, Fullmetal?" General Albatross asked harshly.

He had to answer swiftly to stay and survive. Mustang had to come and find him soon right? He could not believe that he was actually relying on the raven haired man in the first place. "Hughes," Edward said rapidly, "Maes Hughes." It was the only name he could come up with fast enough.

Another slap on the same spot on his face. The force this time was so strong that its impact pushed the alchemist to the cell floor until he was kneeling. "Don't lie to me, Amestrian!" The man roared in response.

"_I wanted to know everything in this world! Why are you interfering with me? Who are you?"_

"_You may have used others' strength to grab hold of God, but you yourself have not grown."_

"_I am what you call 'the world', or perhaps 'the universe', or perhaps 'God', or perhaps 'everything', or perhaps 'one', _and_ I am also YOU."_

"Very well, if you won't tell me your true name, tell me more about Briggs Fortress."

Ed steeled himself, setting his features into what appeared to be a permanent frown and his gold irises shone with ire. "You can't make me talk."

The Drachman was furious now. After all that work, after days of no one at his side, of utter shadows and barely a speck of nourishment, how could this mere boy still seem so sturdy? No, wait. Yet, yet there was something else. There was something there that was different than before. The boy was falling, gracefully unhurried, but falling nonetheless. The nudge in that right direction would do it.

"Remember," Albatross decided to say, "If you don't cooperate, your brother's life is on the line as well as F96's."

"Go find some other guy to interrogate," Edward said unexpectedly.

"You fool! Your brother, Alphonse, your friend, Brosh, and your life is on the line! Do you want me to kill you now?" The General lashed out a fist and rammed it into Ed's unsuspecting jaw line. A bit of red could be seen glinting in the candle light and one could notice that small trickle of blood that now ran down the corner of the alchemist's mouth as he lay spread-eagled on the ground.

But he did not move. He did not need to. The effect was there and throbbing. He did not show fear nor did he flinch as he crashed back down on the earth. That notion alone would be enough to faze Albatross. The villain would be even more motivated to find out just why this person would not break fast enough. Yet that was no matter, not for now anyway.

As Ed attempted to sit up, the man roughly kicked him away, and an incredibly brave man, the brave prisoner man known as prisoner F07, shouted and halted the bulky leader in his tracks before he could continue on with the inflicted abuse upon the older Elric brother.

Albatross was further infuriated than ever. He swiveled on his boots more rapidly than a viper and called down a woman soldier inside the cell, obviously glaring at her emotionless stride as she came in. He pointed a forefinger at F07 and scoffed, growling under his breath and contradicting the agonizing sounds of Denny Brosh's whines. The anger and frustration was then turned onto the doomed man who was quaking and mentally groveling for mercy, but of course none ever came.

General Alik Albatross shoved the tip of his gun into the prisoner's mouth. "You are no longer useful to me," the he stated coolly, and then a _bang _resounded into the firelight. A bullet lodged itself into the back of the man's head and a scarlet flow of blood spewed out onto the hard cobblestone of the cell as the weapon was roughly taken out.

"Take out the trash," he said to the stoic Drachman soldier clad in dark browns and grays, but it was all the private could do to prevent herself from showing off any fear. And, just like her commanding officer told her to do so, her hands clamped around the dampened and tattered clothing of the dead man and the corpse was dragged out with the sound of unworldly crunches.

She glanced back while the man wasn't looking and for a moment, her black eyes met with the curious golden eyed Amestrian. His eyes widened as if in recognition, but the seconds had already passed by too speedily. The moment had disappeared, but the dawning of understanding between the two had just begun.

"_You said, 'it is truth that gives you proper despair so that you do not become conceited.'"_

"…_so just as you said, _I will give you despair._" _

The next morning, Edward was supposed to have breakfast as a reward for "assisting" Patton and her cronies. Instead, he received a parting gift, that is, from prisoner F07, Brosh's cell partner. It was then that Ed happened to despise Albatross more than anyone that instant, for when he lifted the silvery dome covering of the platter on his tray; he saw the most disturbing meal of them all: a severed human head.

ooo

Roy Mustang walked briskly through the Briggs hallways. Drachman forces were beginning to close in near North City and Gestalt. Things were definitely not looking up for his country. Yet, there was a sliver of hope. That morning, he received a hastily written note on a scrap piece of paper which was concealed within a hand grenade that was thrown directly at him on the battlefield, but it never blew up.

_The war is just beginning._

_Hell is imminent for everyone in Amestris. Drachmans will say nothing that will taint infinite power. We will conquer now for our nation in rightful conquest in honor of usurped brothers. Drachma will be raised again! You shall wait in earnest, Amestrian, for we kill those in the way!_

_The war will never end._

It was code, code that only he, his close subordinates, and trusted spies knew. Now, if he took the first letter of every fifth word, starting with the first word after the phrase "The war is just beginning" and before the sentence "The war will never end," the message would look something like this:

_The war is just beginning._

_**H**__ell is imminent for __**e**__veryone in Amestris. Drachmans will __**s**__ay nothing that will taint __**i**__nfinite power. We will conquer __**n**__ow for our nation in __**r**__ightful conquest in honor of __**u**__surped brothers. Drachma will be __**r**__aised again! You shall wait __**i**__n earnest, Amestrian, for we __**k**__ill those in the way!_

_The war will never end._

In other words, the message plainly read: **He's in Rurik**_**.**_

Yes, that was a Drahman prison hold, and with his spy connection, he could find his lost subordinate. It was time to discuss plans with Alphonse Elric. It was time to break Edward Elric out of prison.

He smirked as he strode over to the room where the younger Elric brother was resting for a while. The fighting was under a standstill for a few hours as both sides needed to recuperate and rest up for the battles that would commence the next day. He knocked on the door and genuinely smiled when the entrance was opened to him.

"We have a plan now, Alphonse," Mustang said, "It's time to get your brother out now that we know where they took him. I guess the shrimp has been waiting long enough."

**AN: Xingese Water Torture equals Chinese Water Torture**

**Rurik means "famous power" in Russian.**

**Please read and review!  
**


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